


Fire Forged [Crucible, Part One of Two]

by ninemoons42



Series: Crucible [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Big Bang Challenge, Blacksmithing, F/M, M/M, Magic, PTSD, Phoenix - Freeform, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-09
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where people with powerful and unique abilities are condemned to be broken and beaten and treated as little more than unreliable weapons, life can be a grim prospect for a boy born with the ability to manipulate fire. When an unexpected rescue takes him away from the pain of his old life, Charles must not only plunge into the joys and vicissitudes of freedom, but also embark on a desperate mission to save the only family left to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire Forged [Crucible, Part One of Two]

  
title: Fire Forged [Crucible, Part One of Two]  
Written for Round One @ [](http://xmenbigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://xmenbigbang.livejournal.com/)**xmenbigbang**  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
artist: [](http://madsmurf.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://madsmurf.livejournal.com/)**madsmurf**  
verse: X-Men: First Class and some bits of the comics thrown in  
word count: approx. 31,000 words  
rating: R  
characters / pairings: Main pairing is Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr. Secondary pairings are Scott Summers/Jean Grey and Mystique/Azazel. Also includes an ensemble cast of X-Men and mutants past and present.  
warnings: Discussion of physical and mental abuse of adults and children; abduction/kidnapping [mentioned/implied]; torture [mentioned/implied]; battle scenes and graphic violence. At least one character exhibiting symptoms of PTSD. Angst and pining. Low-fantasy crapsack world.  
Author's notes, credits, and acknowledgements appear at the end.  
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.  
summary: In a world where people with powerful and unique abilities are condemned to be broken and beaten and treated as little more than unreliable weapons, life can be a grim prospect for a boy born with the ability to manipulate fire. When an unexpected rescue takes him away from the pain of his old life, Charles must not only plunge into the joys and vicissitudes of freedom, but also embark on a desperate mission to save the only family left to him.

[Credits](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/190011.html) | The Heart is a Forge [fanmix] [download](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?lna9rw24ybijhej) \+ [track listing](http://ilovetakahana.livejournal.com/136461.html) | [graphics by madsmurf](http://t.co/9SXeK9s)

  
 ** _Fire Forged_**  
 ** _Crucible_** , Part One of Two

Part I

He wakes up to the unchanging stone, to the drearily familiar patterns of cracks and seams spiderwebbing the walls and the ceiling of his cell, to the unfading smell of damp and sweat and sour reeking despair, to resignation and anger. Bars across the windows and the dark grey sky. A faint flicker of stars, the blank face of the moon, never quite near enough to touch.

On the periphery of his senses, he can just barely feel the banked fires in the kitchen and the hands of the people working to stir them, to wake them once more. He strains to extend his reach further and the faint smells of bread and meat suggest themselves, as do the voices of the kitchen scullions as they raise their voices to each other. He registers the echoes of clashing weapons and armor, announcing that the soldiers have begun their drills early today.

He turns over, slowly, and the straw gives only a little beneath him, scratching and rustling. The stone beneath is far less yielding and always so cold. No matter how long he lies in one position, no matter how long he wills what little body heat he can spare into his pallet, he will always be cold, even in the baking summers. He will always wake up shaking, in the mist just before dawn breaks.

The irony of this situation will never truly go away.

He hears his own bones creaking as he slowly pushes himself upright.

He keeps a sliver of broken mirror tucked into the bottom of the straw. He peers at his face. When he was a child, people looked him in the eyes and turned away, suddenly afraid.

Blue eyes like the sky before a summer storm, deep and strange and fey. Blue eyes as cold as a lake, frozen over in the deeps of winter.

Blue, nothing but blue, blue irises surrounding a darker blue pupil. The strangest possible sign of one such as he. An unmistakable mark.

He snaps his fingers, and a little flame flickers into sputtering life between his nose and the mirror. It’s tiny, it’s the barest hint of light and warmth, it’s not even enough for him to see all of his face with.

His face, the deep shadows beneath his eyes. The bruise near his mouth that is only now beginning to turn to an ugly yellow-green, that still hurts whenever he speaks or eats. The scar cutting across his left eyebrow, disappearing into his hairline. His maimed left ear, the top partially cut off.

There is not enough light in the world to make the pain in the lines around his mouth disappear. There is not enough warmth to smooth away his unending grimace.

He knows that any more fire than this will mean he will begin this day chained and beaten again, will mean the collar and long hours of being cut off from his abilities, long hours of painful penance, and today of all days he desperately wants to avoid these things. He cannot be thrown into the depths of the tower today, because he cannot disappoint his sister.

Today is his birthday. His birthday and hers. They will be sixteen today, and if he does not offend anyone, they will allow him out of the tower for a holiday, the first he’s had in six or seven months, though he will have to spend most of it wrapped up and cloaked. Hiding in plain sight.

So he extinguishes the flame and he cries quietly for the loss as he runs through his morning ablutions. He scrubs his face roughly – he can blame the reddened eyes on the washcloth or on the soap – and he pulls his best clothes on: the trousers that have only been mended six times; the shirt that he hasn’t worn for two weeks because he has been saving it for just this day.

He is lacing up his rough boots when there’s a loud knock on the door, and a man with an eyepatch glares in at him.

“Out,” is all the man says as he unlocks the door.

He quickly puts on his heavy cloak, pushing the cloth back over his shoulders. He keeps his eyes trained on the floor as he is marched down corridors and up stairs. He keeps his hands in plain sight, the angular script on his wrists easy to see, declaring to all that he is a dangerous _thing_ , a weapon that could so easily turn on its handler, one that could self-destruct in the blink of an eye, one that could do more harm than good. Not human.

He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he’s actually walking on woven rugs, on deep red bordered in gold – colors he knows from his dreams – and there is someone waiting for him, someone who is smiling at him, a beloved face.

“Dearest,” he whispers, and he stops and he stares and he watches her walk carefully toward him, away from her two escorts. The man is tall, with dark wavy hair falling into his stern eyes. The woman wears her long red hair in a braid, and a wide scar cuts a slanted line across her face from eyebrow to jaw.

His sister: he’s been looking at her all this time. She creaks quietly with every step. Leather armor, the dark brown run through with decorative lines in blue and green. A bow on her back, good black wood carefully shaped and crafted, and a quiver full of arrows. A sword at her hip. Her dark hair neatly tied back, her eyes, the gentle smile on her face. She is holding out her hand. She is wearing a half-glove in black leather. “Hello, brother.”

“Hello,” he whispers, his eyes downcast.

He listens intently as the man in the eyepatch speaks to his sister’s companions. Their hands openly on their swords, their stances ready for anything. “He is not to be left unguarded for a single moment. He is a menace. At the first sign of trouble, you are to subdue him by any means necessary. You will bring him back here by sundown tomorrow, and if you are late, I will have your heads.

“And you,” the man with the eyepatch growls as he turns back to him.

He feels his sister’s hand tighten around his, almost painfully, but he does not cry out. He wills his mind to calmness. Control, always the tight control, like thorns wrapped sharp and tangling around his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut.

“You know what your restrictions are, and what you will face on your return, should we hear about any transgressions on your part. Remember your place, wild mage.”

“And that is all I will ever be. That is why I am alive. I know my place,” he says. Forcing the words past the thick lump in his throat. Hatred, fear, disgust. “I will remember.”

“See that you do.”

When he looks up, the man with the eyepatch is walking away. He looks at his sister. Her eyes are defiant, but her mouth is trembling with her fear.

He doesn’t speak again until they’ve left the castle, their escorts trailing closely behind. “Raven,” he says, quietly; and he leans into her warmth. He lets her settle the hood of the cloak over his face, lets her pull the heavy cloth over his shoulders so that he is completely hidden. “I hope you are well.”

“I – Charles,” is all she says, and she puts her head on his shoulder. “Have they been hurting you again? The collar? Your face – who struck you? I have been away four months, training on the outskirts of the kingdom, and I have come back with wounds and bruises – but you, what have they been doing to you in that tower, all this time...?”

“I’ve just had a few accidents,” he says, into her disbelieving face. “And sometimes they strike me for no real reason. I am not working hard enough, or I am showing off. Nothing more than normal.

“They’re just treating me as they think I deserve,” he says, dully. “They have marked me for this. All they have been teaching me is only what they believe I must know. Sometimes I forget who I truly am – and that is why I am so grateful for you. You know me still, Raven.”

“And I still know you best,” she says. The note of staunch trust in her voice calls to him, pulls at his heart. Bonds forged in fire and in blood. “Charles, it hurts me to see you like this. You’re not a monster. Those terrible names that they call you are all lies. They’re not you. There is no reason for them to fear you; you only want to help them.”

At that, he tightens his grip on her hand, he lifts his head for the first time and allows her to look full into his blue eyes. “I hate this servitude as much as you do, but we are here because we must do what we can. We have to help them, we have to force them to change if we must, but we have to do it from within. Until things change – if they can change. We have to endure, and you must harden your heart – harden it against me if you must. I will bear you no grudge for it. We must carry on, you and I, for worse days are coming.” He taps his fingers against his temple, once. “I know this to be true.”

“The dreams,” she says. A flat voice. A statement; not a question. “Charles. You’ve been dreaming again.”

“I have, and I am frightened by them. Dark times are coming – and we must be ready. If I am to be used as a weapon then I must be one.”

He watches her think about it, her brows furrowed, and then: “And so must I.” Her mouth firms.

When they reach the horses they mount up, silently, and he rides close to his sister as they pass out of the city gates. Down, into the fields. Greenery and flowers growing in the shadow of the city’s walls, and ahead, the great rolling vineyards. Beyond are the forests and the distant mountains, snow on their shoulders, overlooking the very borders of the kingdom.

Men and women working among the vines. Dogs barking and running past them, weaving easily around their horses, disappearing into the distance.

He glances over his shoulder at their silent escorts. “You do not know them?” he asks.

Raven shakes her head. “I think they’re from a different regiment. They came into the training barracks a week ago; their faces are familiar, but they won’t talk to us.”

Charles shrugs, and keeps looking at his sister. It only takes him a thought to keep his horse going in the right direction, a twitch of the reins; he’s been trained to ride well. A required skill for everyone in the tower. “Will you tell me about your training? I have not yet congratulated you for winning your armor.”

His sister still looks troubled, but she takes the time to smile at him, launches into an animated description of life in the soldiers’ barracks. Her commanding officer, a woman with long black hair and bronze skin, who is also one of the most formidable swordswomen she’s ever met; the other members of her training group. The boy who talks incessantly, except when he’s thrashing someone in hand-to-hand combat; the girl who can throw daggers and insults with pinpoint accuracy. She talks about being the winner of an archery competition in her camp; she talks about one of the other officers enlisting her in a friendly conspiracy to steal apples from a local farmer, and he grudgingly smiles, though he wants to wave an admonishing finger at her.

The horses set a slow, gentle pace through the heat of the day. He is grateful when Raven eventually steers them into a small copse of trees; the sun is beating down, and his cloak is heavy against his skin.

He follows her into the branches of a great weeping tree. Something is rippling past his feet – water, barely a trickle, following the trail for a few more steps before it curves and flows away. Cold, when he dips his hand into it, and he licks his fingertips. Scent of earth and grass, and the faint taste of crushed grapes and fallen flowers.

He is so terribly conscious of the guards following his every movement, and reluctantly he retraces his steps, back to where his sister is sitting among the roots of the tree, back to her slightly worried smile. She is laying out the contents of one of her saddlebags: a few dainties to eat, a double handful of raisins, a waterskin.

He digs through his pockets, then, and he presents her with a gift. A wide silver cuff. Her answering smile almost makes him want to laugh, if only he could forget the terrible dread in his heart.

Because of his dreams, he knows she can’t wear this gift for very long. It’s difficult, holding this knowledge close, hiding it where she can’t simply deduce it with a glance. No matter what it turns out to be, it’s still a gift for her in the right here and now. He has to think of it that way.

“Here, this is how you wear it,” he says instead, and he clicks the cuff closed around her wrist, where it lies snugly against her skin. “It will not make any noise, so you may wear it with your armor. That is, if you are permitted this in your barracks?”

“My commanding officer can hardly complain if I wear something like this,” and she laughs, softly, begins to draw lines on her hand. “She has this beautiful piece, Charles, four wide rings on her fingers connected with flat chains to a bracelet on her wrist. The whole thing is silver, and studded with large red gems. I have never seen her without it, and it doesn’t seem to hinder her, not even when she is thrashing the rest of us with her sword.”

“Then this will be safe with you. Will you wear it at all times, and think of me?”

“Of course.” She looks up after a moment. “And you? Do you have a cuff of your own to wear?”

He shakes his head. “I am not allowed these things. Frivolities. And I might lose them at any moment.”

Her eyes harden again, for just an instant, and her next smile is a little strained. “Come and eat, dearest,” is all she says, however.

The food comes from a cook who favors Raven – she explains that he has told her that she reminds him of his daughter. She pours out cups of fruit juice and he drinks his portion slowly, enjoys its clean tartness on his tongue. The raisins, she says after a moment, will be her gift to him, and so he eats a dozen or so and tucks the rest away for when he’s back in the tower.

“I have a place where I can hide them,” he says, reassuringly, “and you know that there are no rats or vermin there. We do quite a good job of keeping the stones scrubbed and clean, enough that we can eat off them.”

He ignores the flash of worry that flickers in her eyes, only holds her hands tightly, apologetically.

After, he lies down on the grass – much softer and much more comfortable here than in his little pallet, or on the numbing stone – and he lays his head in his sister’s lap. He feels her move the hood away, feels her fingers carding gently through his hair.

“You are turning silver,” she says. “I’m not sure that it would look well on you.”

He knows she’s avoiding the old marks, old scars long since faded from his skin, but never from his memory.

Sometimes he wakes up and it’s all he can do to stop himself from screaming – and even then, when he clamps his own hands over his mouth, he still can’t stop himself from keening in his distress. He’s clenching his teeth now.

The hot blood flowing over his skin, drying slowly to a hard brown crust. The piece of his ear in the hunter’s fingers. Raven, beaten and near death in his arms, the flames raging around them in an uncontrollable ring, spreading so far and so fast. His hands, reaching out to the fire for the first time, his skin growing pleasantly warm, buzzing with potential. The sudden roar like sweet music, like something was asking him for orders, like something was eager to obey him.

He remembers closing his eyes as the hunter seized his throat, prepared to throw him aside.

He remembers screaming, words in a language that he had never spoken before. Words that he now knows by heart, the knowledge precious to him, hidden inside his head.

And he remembers opening his eyes to a pile of ash, to Raven awake and aware, clinging to him and looking afraid.

He opens his eyes in the here and now, and here is his sister. A matchless understanding in her eyes.

He doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve this. How can she love him, how can she care for him? Her comrades know of him now, and she must carry the shame of it. She will have a hard time advancing in rank because of him.

She is a talented warrior; she deserves to command.

They don’t speak again until the sun begins to set, and that is when he gets up and he runs out, past the trickle of cold water, to the highest point he can reach and still be within sight of the others.

The sun falling to its rest, red and gold and yellow, licking across his skin and he throws his head back, raises his hands as far as they’ll go over his head, creaking bones be damned. He allows himself to smile for his favorite part of the day, so rarely glimpsed now. The fading warmth, the light burning his eyes.

Someone is taking his hand. Raven, who is following his lead. Their linked hands raised over their heads. They stand there until the wind picks up again, and then they huddle together, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders.

And then one of the guards speaks. Charles is hearing the man’s voice for the first time. Quiet, commanding. Not unpleasant, though the words coming out of his mouth are a different story altogether. “We must find a safe place to camp.”

Joy turns to ashes in his heart. They are not worrying for his safety. Others must be protected from him. Unsuspecting people, who might fear him or hate him or tear him and his to pieces.

“Can we not find some small inn, some quiet house where we can stay? My brother isn’t some wild weapon like you might think; you can’t imprison him all the time,” Raven protests.

“We are only following orders,” and this time it’s the woman speaking. Her voice is low, and rough, like her words are being scraped over jagged rocks.

“I know of a place,” the man says, and he raises an eyebrow at his fellow guard before leading the way back to the horses. They are silent as they mount up.

Charles knees his horse closer to Raven’s, and they join hands again.

The inn is surprisingly elegant inside, despite its run-down appearance. He huddles into his cloak and he watches with wide eyes as Raven bargains for the price of a night, haggles shrewdly for food and water for their horses.

Such confidence in her, now. He remembers how she used to cling to him every night, and how she would shrink away from speaking with strangers. Soldiering has given her such confidence: it’s brought out the strength in her stance, the easy banter and the friendly insults with which she plies the innkeeper, the smile that pulls an answering grimace from the old man.

He envies her the ease of contact. They have permanently switched roles now. Now he has to skulk in the corners and hope no one peers under his hood. Now he has to hide his eyes and his hands at all times. Now he has to imagine himself as something tiny and harmless, in the hope that other people will perceive him in the same way.

All of his dark ideas vanish with a gasp when they’re shown the room. Beds! Real beds with sheets and pillows!

“Dearest,” and it’s his sister, grinning fondly at him. “I think you’ll sleep better if you wash up now, before you fall into bed and I won’t be able to talk to you until the morning.”

“I washed up when I woke,” Charles says, a little baffled and a little amused, but he takes a washcloth from the basket near the beds all the same, and walks out into the corridor.

That his sister is teasing him, that she’s smiling and happy, is enough to make him just sigh, and not protest, when the male guard follows him out around the back of the inn, is standing within shouting distance as he puts the washcloth over his face and immerses himself in the tub full of hot water.

What luxury, to have soap and to be able to wash his hair properly. What little water he can use at the tower tends to be cold, and he has been beaten too many times for using his abilities on it. When the winters come and the entire tower is freezing, there are mornings when he has to crack the thin crust of ice in the basin, and even on those days he just grits his teeth and shivers and uses it anyway.

Even though there is no one waiting to use the bath, he does not soak for long, and he reluctantly hoists himself out after a quarter of an hour, and he ignores the surprised look that the soldier shadowing him sends his way.

Raven follows him back into the room after a few moments, already out of her armor and her hair dripping around her shoulders.

“I’ve missed you,” he says after a moment.

“And I you, my dear.” Raven sits next to him, puts her hands in his lap. The skin of her arms is deeply tanned. Charles runs his fingers over the crisscrossing hairline scars on her skin, the edges of older wounds, long since healed. The marking on her wrist is easy to read and easy to bear. She seems proud of it. _Soldier._

The marking on his own wrist reads _Outcast_.

“Last year I thought you would miss our birthday,” he says. “You were training so hard, and you were bruised all over when you made it to the tower, and I looked just as sorry as you did. Like we were cats fished out of a river in full flood. Sad and shaking and silent, clinging together.”

“You frightened me then, Charles,” she says. “You looked like you were two steps away from death. Will you now tell me what they have been doing to you? Who gave you that bruise?”

He looks away, pulls his hands from hers. “My instructor. He threw his books at me, and one of them hit me on the mouth. I cut my lip open on my own teeth. This happened two days ago.”

He fights the memory. He speaks without any inflections in his voice at all.

But the images rise up in his mind’s eye all the same. Trying to control a series of nine rings of fire nested inside each other, it takes him too long to set them spinning around at his instructor’s command, and the next thing Charles knows is that he must dispel the flames or absorb them as quickly as he can, his own screams be damned, because he is in his instructor’s room, and there are many books in there, and those books are flying at his head as though controlled by an unseen force.

Which is the truth. His instructor can move things with the power of his mind, and he is doing that, and all the while he’s hurling the vilest abuse, calling him a blind fool and a useless weapon.

Then and now, he hangs his head, and he doesn’t look up even when Raven wraps her arms tightly around him, draws him in close. He turns his face in toward her, breathes in her soap and the clean scent of her skin.

It’s still not enough to quell the memories, and he sighs and he resigns himself to another sleepless night.

Charles dreams: he is himself, aged sixteen, and Raven is a child no higher than his knees. He dreams that they are standing, facing each other, in a familiar place. A stone house, little more than a hut. The sounds of wind and water rushing outside, roaring and swelling; the mountains, looming as if protectively over them. A happy place for them – the place where they had lived together, searching the mountain brush for fruit and meat, playing games around the little hearth. The weeks before they had been found out and separated, before Charles had been dragged away to the tower, fighting his captors every step of the way.

A shadow falls over his shoulder, and child-Raven cries out and starts to run towards him, and he watches in blank shock as something seems to stand between them, keeping her away from him. He watches her pound her tiny fists against an invisible wall.

He holds up his wrist and sees the writing there, and a thick line of blood spreading across the ink, almost blotting it out: his own blood.

A hand closing around that wrist. A rough hand, a scarred hand, old scars and long-healed burns marking the skin, fresh wounds on fingers and arm. The other person’s blood is mingling with his, red dripping onto grey.

 _Who are you,_ Charles thinks, and he doesn’t resist, he lets the other person pull him away, though his heart is breaking and child-Raven is crying out and reaching for him. He can’t even brush against her fingers. Farther and farther, and something is dragging his sister away, and he can’t even cry out.

And that’s when he suddenly wakes up. His eyes fly open in the darkness and Raven, the real Raven, sixteen-year-old Raven, is whispering urgently at him. “Charles, something’s wrong.”

“I know.”

“Do you think our escorts – ”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish: the door flies open. Charles yanks his cloak partway on, and he doesn’t even think, simply leaps over his bed, lands neatly at his sister’s side as she moves into a ready stance. He watches her shift so she’s covering him. She draws her sword from its scabbard and the sharp rasp of the blade moving fills the room. The weapon grasped firmly in her hands.

He places one of his hands over both of hers, slots his fingers into hers so they’re both holding on to the sword.

“Charles,” she says, suddenly, and he wraps his free arm around her shoulders.

“Don’t!”

He looks, and he can see Raven’s eyes moving at the same time, and the female guard is bracing herself on the doorway, one hand stretched out toward them. Her wild eyes. Every line in her body is screaming: fear, protect, mission, _don’t_.

“I beg you, don’t attack,” the woman is saying, as rapidly as she can. The words slurring together as she hurries to explain. “You don’t recognize us, soldier,” she says, and Raven starts, “because we are not the real guards.”

“Who. Are. You,” Raven growls, and Charles feels her shoulders tense, knows he’s a heartbeat away from himself attacking. Anything to protect his sister. “Who sent you? Why do you want us? _Speak!_ ”

He has all of a moment to lean his forehead to the back of her neck – he has no other way of showing her how he admires her and loves her right here, right now – before she’s tensing again. The guard is approaching them, her hands still outstretched in entreaty.

“My name is Jean,” the woman says. “The other guard is Summers, and he is my husband. We are members of an organization that is fighting against the tower. We want to free the mages, we want the oppression to end, once and for all. We want mages and people to live and work together.”

“You know that what you want is impossible,” Charles hears himself say. “A noble goal, but impossible all the same. You may be on our side, but...we are already resigned to our fate.”

“You shouldn’t be.” And the man, Summers, is walking in. Blood flowing down his arm and his face from deep gashes, but he looks calm, and his voice is even and cold.

Charles is taken aback – Summers is looking him in the eyes and isn’t flinching at all. “And why not.”

“Because you are not alone.”

Raven shakes her head. “It’s too convenient,” she says, and she’s spitting the words over her shoulder. “Charles?”

He looks the man and the woman in the eyes. Jean cannot hold his gaze – but Summers can.

And he makes the decision from his dreams, even if he cannot understand it himself. He has to trust in what it could mean, in what the dreams are saying, for they have never gone wrong. Finding Raven, his mutilated ear, their assailant vanishing in a white-hot flash of light. Their flight to the stone house in the mountains, the fire, the soldiers finding them and separating them, the rush of tears. He’s lived this part of his life knowing what must happen, being powerless to stop events as they rushed headlong into them. “Raven.”

“Charles.”

“We will follow them for now. This is where things change.”

She explodes, and he thinks that he already knows what they are both going to say. “But how do you know – not the dreams? But we don’t even know what’s happening out there; we don’t even know why they’re fighting! I believe you, there is a point where things change, but is this that point?”

“Raven. I have never dreamed wrong.” He winces, he sees the same expression cross her face. “The dreams have pushed me to this point – and after this, I don’t know what will happen, not until I start dreaming again. But this – this is what we’ve been waiting for. Everything leads to this.”

He turns to the guards. Their startled faces. “I have known that you were coming, but not what you looked like. Our apologies, Jean and Summers, if either of us have acted wrongly towards you.”

“Fear can do that,” Summers says, mildly, and Charles watches as he holds his hand out to his wife. “We understand you, and there is nothing to forgive.” His face hardens suddenly. “Ready yourselves. We must be moving soon.”

When he turns back to Raven, she is lowering her sword. A myriad of expressions crossing her face. Shock, fear, hope, confusion. Love, burning at him, like his own powers. Tears gathering in her eyes. “Lead on. I will protect you, now.”

Charles nods, once, and he hides his eyes and his hands once more. Hides the fear in his eyes from her.

“Charles,” Raven says, and he looks up to her, watches her pull off her gloves. “Wear these.”

“They might get burned.”

“Then you’ll just have to see that they won’t,” she says, and now there is a little smile playing around the corners of her mouth, and he knows what will happen and he takes the gloves.

He glances warily at the cuff around her wrist as she resheathes her sword, knows it must come to him – and he follows them out of the room, and for the first time in a long while he breathes freely.

He looks inside himself, at the flame that he keeps in his heart, always protected – and he smiles. He tells it to _burn_. To _explode_. Words that he hasn’t thought of in years, that he’s always blocked out whenever he was angry, that he’s had to keep secret every moment that he was locked in the tower.

Now – now is a different story.

Raven is looking at him, and her eyebrows are pulled together in her worry – but he breathes in, and he smiles at her. He is trying to be reassuring.

“Keep moving,” Jean says, frantically. “We have to get away now!”

He gestures at her, once, and she falls silent. To his sister, he says, “Raven? Please stand back. And take them with you.”

She smiles now, and she backs away as fast as she can, takes Jean and Summers by the hands, starts moving them backwards as well. His sister, shouting encouragement at him. Her face lighting up. “Charles! Let it fly!”

He holds up his hands. The blazing rush in his blood, the smell of hot iron, the crackling and roaring in his ears. He turns his palms toward himself and he can see orange light flowing outward.

As she backs away, he can see Raven nodding, the tears in her eyes. The power bursting through him – she’s well out of reach now, but it doesn’t matter. He can sense her, joy and apprehension and fear and _life_ , command and _family_. Everything about her and the two guards flanking her.

He calls out, and his voice is rough like he’s been screaming, deep and powerful, the voice he hears in his dreams – his own self, pulling him on, making him run always forward: “Raven. _Go._ ”

And at last he closes his eyes. The world narrows down to himself and the flames, eating at him now, strength flooding down every nerve and every muscle in him, the flame and the power like old friends finally met again.

 _Let go,_ the voices in his head are shouting. _Let us out. We must be free._

And he replies, for the first time in a long while: _Yes!_

Triumph and _power. To be whole again. To find you again. It has been such a long time._

Flames, heat and strength, and Charles _falls_.

///

Part II

He dreams, and in the distance he can hear the crackle and hum of a small fire.

Warmth.

Comfort.

The sound of someone moving nearby.

He knows almost instinctively that he’s among friends.

His wrist hurts, still. A sword from nowhere, a shocked look in Jean’s eyes, flash of her running towards him, and then the bright cold strike. Pain. He remembers closing his bloodied fingers into a fist. A scream, and seeing his attacker’s face. The final instant before the punch. The man freezing, flashing white, crumbling into ash.

His sister and her sword, standing over Summers, who has fallen to the ground, and defending him and Jean both. Attack, defense, a sweep of her arm, a man stumbling away from her, pawing at the blood all over his face. She’s almost cut him down. The challenge burning in her eyes. Determination, _skill_ , everything she’s been learning, everything embodied in the writing on her arm. His sister the fighter, now and always.

Himself, on the wing at last, after all these years. A song in his ears, a melody on the wind: power and anger. He’s missed it so badly.

The inn under attack. Tattered banners and men and women covered in dried and fresh blood. Frenzy, blades slashing with murderous intent. They’ve come here for a reason, and this isn’t the first place they’ve tried. There is so much _evil_ boiling around the inn.

In the dreams, he remembers and at the same time he forgets that he knows exactly who the reasons for this are.

He strikes his enemies down easily, one after the other. There is a certain irony in being able to apply the techniques he’s been learning from the tower – and he relishes the pride he feels. The challenge of refining an ability intended for mass destruction such that he can use it on one of a pair of combatants, take out his actual target and leave the other person completely unharmed.

He’s dividing his strength a handful of ways – a wall of flames to protect Summers and Jean, a thread of fire ringing Raven’s sword, the continued attacks on the enemy forces. The inn is ablaze, and he’s gradually pulling at the heat, absorbing it into himself, leaving cool smoke in its wake. He watches from on high as the innkeeper looks for his lodgers, as he herds them slowly away. Charles works to keep a clear path for them.

What energy he takes from the inn he unleashes upon its attackers. What he carefully pulls away from walls and rooms, he throws with a roar at his enemies. Charred piles of armor and bone, weapons melting, falling harmlessly into the ashes.

Their guards are gone, lost in the smoke, but he can sense them, a flash of hope in Summers’s mind, Jean calling out again, but this time there’s no alarm in her voice. People coming to their aid? Here?

But he can’t spare them another thought because Raven is shouting at him, her smile a bright beacon in his mind. “Fly, dearest!” Waving her arms in encouragement. A brilliant flash of light – the silver cuff – and then her exultant voice cutting off, a quiet gasp. He can hear her even from here. A shadow falling over her, a quick glance at a pleased sneer.

Charles doesn’t think, doesn’t stop to consider what’s going on. He flies straight up, as high as he can – and then he stoops, screaming for blood, out of the sky. Three or four enemy fighters surrounding his sister.

He strikes cleanly. He catches the first man with the edge of a wing, sends his head flying. He drives a handful of fiery darts through the woman’s chest, so quickly she doesn’t even draw breath to cry out. The next two soldiers he simply snaps his fingers at, and they’re engulfed in flames, screaming all the while.

The fifth man is the biggest of the entire enemy group. A number of scars running over his skin. A massive pair of fists, clutching a sword and a staff.

Charles’s eyes are drawn to the marking on his opponent’s left wrist, and he’s not surprised that he can read it. The same letters spelling out _Outcast_. The man’s blue eyes.

Something hotter than blood ringing his wrist. Silver cuff. A broken clasp. How? He remembers. He doesn’t want to remember.

In the dreams, he falls to the ground and he begins to keen. A shadow standing over him to share his grief. Summers leaning heavily on Jean, just barely able to walk.

_Raven is missing._

_They have taken my sister._

And Charles opens his eyes.

“Don’t get up,” someone says nearby.

He tenses, but he doesn’t move. He grinds his teeth for a few moments. “I thought I was among friends.”

“You probably are, but your body is not your friend right now.” Someone is standing over him: a face full of lines and hollows. Blue-green eyes. A thin mouth, curved in sympathy.

“What happened to me,” Charles asks.

“Fought a rogue mage.” The man counts on his fingers. “You were targeted, you and your sister both. Nearly overwhelmed that inn – Summers knew nothing, by the way, sheer damn accident, I’m sure he’s unhappy about that now....”

“I _know_ it was an accident,” Charles growls. “What happened!”

The man merely lifts a corner of his mouth. A strange little flash of a smile. “The group that attacked the inn – they are corrupted, down to the last swordsman and the last mage. Looking for people they can add to their ranks. An army of everything that’s wrong. Malice incarnate. They don’t take people for ransom, they only take prisoners, and those they intend to destroy, to corrupt them utterly. Your sister could join them, or she could not. It is a matter of how long she can resist – but you should know no one has ever escaped them. Death will be a mercy to her, if you should find her again.”

Charles pulls himself upright, feels every bone and muscle scream with pain, feels the fire within his heart blaze up in protest, and he shakes his head. Denial and worry sinking their claws into him. “You don’t know her, or you wouldn’t be speaking like that. I do. She is dear to me, and she’s so strong, so strong. I’ll find her again. And she will still be Raven.”

He says it to convince the man, to convince _himself_. Until he can dream of the future again, until he can stop dreaming and reliving the past.

A hard hand, warm on his shoulder. He slumps, suddenly, tired again and dizzy. “I believe in her, I believe in my sister,” he is whispering, and he goes without protest as he’s lowered into the bedroll again. He catches his breath, asks, faintly: “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Mages are not allowed friends,” and he’s falling asleep again, and the man is chuckling darkly.

“So you think,” and there is so much old pain in that voice, such a deep wound, and Charles would get up and try to find some way of helping it heal, if only he could stop the voices in his head, the slow and inexorable slide down into sleep. “How little you know, you and your forsaken tower.”

This time, he doesn’t dream.

When he opens his eyes again, he grapples with confusion: guilt and gratitude vie for his heart. He needs to remember that people have been lost, that he is missing his own other half, that there are people out there who are worried for him.

How can there be people who are concerned for him? How can this man care, this man he has only just met? For as long as Charles has lived with the shouts of fear and hatred, with the pointing fingers, there has only been one person who truly cared for him.

And now she is gone.

Charles dashes the tears from his eyes, buries his face in his hands. He’s never had any use for the rites and litanies of religion, but he sends up a prayer all the same, for the first time in years, to whatever could be listening to one such as him. A prayer for his sister and for her sanity.

When he looks up, he is seeing the campsite for the first time.

A canopy of trees overhead, tall and rustling, full of birdsong and the tiny scratches and calls of animals and insects. Weak shafts of sunlight struggling through the branches. A bedroll beneath him; the earth where he has been sleeping is still warm. Within arm’s reach is a small circle of rocks around a pile of ashes, the remains of a fire that has been dead two or three hours.

There are no other bedrolls, and there is no sign of the other man.

The wind moving through the trees, a comforting kind of whispering, words in no human language. Charles rearranges himself, sits carefully on his heels. He has long since become comfortable in this position, something to help him think and concentrate during the long hours in the tower, whether in lessons or, every now and then when he’s been extremely unlucky, locked in the collar – without his powers, feeling cold and half-blind.

Here, he can feel everything, and it is a soothing place, if remote. There are shadows dancing, a soft trill of distant birdsong, and he closes his eyes. He reaches out with his heart, with his senses.

Water gurgling, a sizeable current nearby, rocks on the shore and the gentle splash of waves on gravel and sand. A mother bird clucking fretfully over her nest: three – no, five – hatchlings, each one crying louder than the last. The rush of wings as the father bird lands suddenly, hopping back towards home, and the hatchlings greeting him, a chorus for the food he’s brought back. The ashes of the fire smell like wood sap and bread. Metal, warming at one wrist; his shirt now full of ash and blood. Cloth wrapped around the other wrist, freshly reapplied, a thin salve cool against his skin.

He doesn’t have to look to know that the wound is the one he’s been expecting from his dreams. When it heals there will be a rough scar, the skin jaggedly knitted back together, and it will write a wide line over the brand that says _Outcast_ , almost obliterating it.

A faint scent of pine, nothing that grows here in the plains. A fresh wave of memories: playing string games with Raven, watching her gorge herself on fresh berries, their first experiments at cooking meat over a fire. Some of the scent is coming from the salve spread over his wound, but the rest of it is mixed with sweat and a faint tang of burning salt.

A smell that is getting stronger now, and undercut by other smells: the fresh scents of fruit and river and earth.

“Hello,” Charles says toward the sound of the other man’s footsteps. He clenches his hands into fists, once, twice, then relaxes. He dispels the pain, the happy memories, and the dark dreams. “And thank you. Whoever you are. A friend, you said.”

“Erik,” the man says. “My name is Erik.”

Charles takes that name in, recognizes that voice. Today it sounds almost relaxed – but he now knows that he didn’t dream the words from the first conversation.

He suspects he will be hearing that thread of pain and regret for a long time.

“Charles,” he says, finally. He’s about to say something else.

“You can open your eyes.”

He does, and he blinks in surprise.

The man is sitting right in front of him, their knees are touching, and Charles remembers those eyes: blue mixed in with green. The lines in Erik’s face seem to be even deeper this morning. This close, it’s easy to reach out for the details. Roughly-mended tears in his black trousers and in his grey tunic, a handful of knives up his sleeves and in the small of his back and down the back of his neck, gloves that are just a shade too small for him. His wrists turned down, so Charles can’t tell what his marking is.

“Hello, Erik,” Charles says.

“Good to see you awake and aware, Charles,” is all Erik says, the same rough voice and the same unflinching expression on his face, and he gets to his feet easily, dusts his hands off on his trousers.

From this angle he seems _tall_. Charles has never been any good at estimating height, but he knows Erik is taller than him. Taller than Summers, perhaps.

“You’ve been murmuring in your sleep.”

“I have disturbed you?”

An odd shadow appears in Erik’s eyes. “No. But you’re not the first – well, never mind.”

Charles winces. Is Erik from the tower? What does his marking say? “Will it help if I apologize?”

“Not really.”

Charles gets up, folds the bedroll into a neat little pile of cloth. “Then I won’t,” he says, and he catches the startled quirk of Erik’s mouth as he moves toward the river to wash.

Cold water, so icy it startles a gasp from him, and he scoops it up in his hands, alternates between splashing his face and drinking thirstily. There are some stray berries at the water’s edge and he dunks them in, crunches them between his teeth. Bright sweetness and cool water coating his tongue, and he washes up some more, runs his dripping hands through his hair and shivers as he finally gets up and walks back to the campsite.

Two plump fish are already skewered on sturdy twigs, and Charles watches attentively as Erik guts the third fish. He is rebuilding the fire, new branches mixed in with old.

Charles laughs when Erik sees him standing there, when Erik arches an eyebrow and asks, “Are you planning to help me?”

“Of course; I was just waiting for you to finish.” And Charles snaps his fingers, waves his hand once – and the fire crackles cheerfully into life, the new twigs popping and sending up a waft of fragrant smoke into the air.

He watches Erik arrange the fish on the upwind side of the flames, watches Erik pull a small knife from his boot and peel an apple, the golden-tawny skin falling in a single long spiral.

The same apple suddenly flies toward him, a few moments later, and when he catches it in his hands it separates neatly into two halves, the core already cut out.

He sits down on his heels again, an arm’s-length away from Erik, eating his half of the apple contemplatively. A drop of juice escapes his mouth and he catches it on the back of his hand, licks it clean.

This close, he can watch Erik’s movements, spare and unhurried as he eats the fruit and tends the fish – and now he can also see the skin of Erik’s wrists. Clean and unmarked; there is neither any sign of an old mark nor the scars that result from a mark being erased.

“I’ve never had a marking,” is all Erik says, never looking up from his work. He’s turning the fish this way and that, and the gloves on his hands protect him from the flames. “We never really lived in communities, we were always on the move...my parents never believed that the tattoos could do any good. They believed that the markings would only drive wedges, as well they should – and you can see how they were right.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says.

“Don’t be. They died doing something _right_. They gave their lives for mine. I carry on in their memory.”

“As I do, after a fashion.” Charles sits quietly, thinks of Raven. “Raven is not really my sister,” he begins, trying to distract Erik and himself, and he looks up in surprise when he’s suddenly offered one of the cooked fish. A few bites, and he smiles and eats, and he keeps going, as quietly as he can and still have Erik hear him. “I never knew my father or my mother; I was raised by my mother’s sister. It was the only time I’d ever lived around other children.

“When I was eight years old I found out what my powers were: the dreams. Knowing that I had to leave that house and wander until I found Raven. And more importantly, the flames. I was climbing a tree, which started to bend under my weight, and when I got to the top it dropped me right out of the branches. I did not have far to fall, but both my body and my pride were hurt – so I glared at the tree and made it catch fire.

“It was beautiful.” There is a distant prickling all along Charles’s skin, as if the memory’s trying to burn its way out of him. He holds out his palm and a faint, flickering image in the shape of the tree dances on it. He watches it until the next thought occurs to him; he closes his hand and the flame dies quietly, flows back into him. “And I felt such pride in myself – here was something I could create. Something I could do well, without ever having to be taught. A thing of beauty, though it was always a beauty that needed to be controlled.

“But you know how mages are feared, and my kind most of all. Fire is never a good thing, not here, not in the vineyards, not in the mountains.

“Despite her fear, despite her horror, my aunt still had some compassion in her, and instead of turning me over to the tower immediately, she sent me away into the mountains, into the wilderness. She told the other children never to talk about me and my abilities ever again and enforced that with terrifying beatings – I saw her strike the two boys who had seen me set the tree on fire, and they were so afraid of her and of me. They were crying when I left, but not because she was beating them. They were crying because I was being sent away. I don’t even remember who they are any more.”

Charles startles when a hard, heavy hand lands on his shoulder.

It’s a gentle reminder, and he turns back to his fish, still delicious though it is now cold. Charles bows his head and feels Erik’s hand squeeze, briefly. And then Erik is finishing his own meal.

Charles feels cold, suddenly, and he tries to ignore it by continuing the story. “Because of the dreams I already knew where to go, what I needed to do, when I was going to find my sister. But when I heard Raven crying, when I found her huddled in a bruised heap beneath a pile of leaves – I nearly set her alight too. I was angry, I wanted to kill the people who had hurt her, I wanted to know where her parents were. I wanted to scream at them, to shake them, for abandoning someone so good and so loving.

“And when she was done screaming in fear she screamed at me for the first time. She said I had frightened her, and that I mustn’t do it again.” Charles laughs, but it is a bittersweet thing, to be telling this story and not have its subject within arm’s reach. To tell this story and not have Raven snickering and interrupting. Not that they have had many reasons to tell others about themselves, but it is still their past, the beginning of their lives together.

“So she is to you a star to steer by,” Erik says. He is on his feet, extinguishing the fire with water and earth, scattering and burying the rocks surrounding the fire.

“And more,” Charles says, and he stands up and looks for his cloak, pulls it on. He is about to draw the hood over his face when he is stopped. Erik’s hand on his shoulder, again. The unmarked skin of Erik’s wrists.

“No need to hide in that, I should think,” Erik says.

“I don’t know if we’re facing any danger here,” Charles says, as reasonably as he can. “I dreamed about the inn last night, nothing about the future yet. Until then, until I can think about being sure, I’d rather remain hidden.”

“That cloak is only an accident waiting to happen in this forest, and I intend for us to travel as fast and as far as we can,” Erik explains. “And you will walk and run and _train_ better if you’re not confining yourself – but if you wish, perhaps we can compromise.” He pulls a long length of white cloth from his pack, long enough to serve as a scarf. “Wrap that around your head – there should be enough cloth to pull over your eyes if you need it.”

Charles folds his cloak away as neatly as he can, stows it with the bedroll. He winds the scarf a few times around his face and neck, and then tilts his head questioningly at the other man. “How do I look?”

When Erik walks up to him, Charles coughs in disbelief, in annoyance, and tips his head back a little further. Erik is taller, blast him, and by at least a head. He’s about to say something about when Erik ties the ends of the scarf into a neat knot. “I’ve seen worse, but that’ll do,” is all Erik says, though there is a spark of amusement in his eyes.

Charles coughs again and is grateful that he’s hidden most of his face because he’s sixteen, and he knows exactly what the heat rising in his cheeks means. Just because he’s been in the tower for years, doesn’t mean he’s ignorant about the needs of the body. He remembers walking in on hurried, heated encounters, and being chased out with either laughter or things being thrown at him. He remembers being asked to stand guard outside an instructor’s room, remembers ignoring the cries from within by burying his nose in a thick book.

He remembers Raven confiding in him on one of their birthdays, that she’d taken someone to her bed: that he had hurt her, a little, by accident, but that they had had a good time learning about each other. The idea of getting to touch someone else. They had been of an age, Raven and the boy, and she had mentioned wanting to write letters to him.

Charles thinks back to the last few nights. He feels a little guilty; he thinks he might have had a chance to ask her about that boy, but the dreams and the fight have taken away his chance for now. He remembers snatches of her excited descriptions: glossy black hair falling to his shoulders. Incredible skill with the sword. Loyalty and mischief. A badly-healed scar forming an arc over his left eye.

He remembers smacking Raven lightly on her shoulder because she had started to describe the boy’s body, and he remembers her smacking him back, and the ensuing wrestling match that ended up with Raven banging his head affectionately into the cobblestones. Bright laughter, their grins, and Raven declaring that “You will still always be my brother, you beautiful idiot.”

“Ready to go,” Erik says, abruptly.

His voice jolts Charles out of his reverie, the dark spiral into his emotions. Charles suddenly finds himself looking at Erik with wild eyes for a long, breathless moment. Regret like a deep wound in his heart, slithering cold down his nerves – and then he catches his breath, pulls himself back to reality. He says “Thank you,” and throws Erik a smile.

The corner of Erik’s mouth twitches and there is a strange, unreadable look in his eyes, but it doesn’t stay there for long – a blink, and he’s back behind his walls. “Come, the horses are this way.”

Erik sets a fast pace through the woods and Charles is preoccupied with staying on what little path there is, and it takes a few hours before he finally has enough breath to ask, before he finally draws level with the other man. “Please do not think me rude, but may I know what your plans are? For me, I mean. I need to find my sister; I want to know if you will go with me, or if I must follow you elsewhere, or....”

Erik reins in and motions him off the path, and they walk slowly among the trees.

Charles meets his eyes as best as he can.

“Charles. You’ve lost your sister because I failed you,” Erik says. Shame, rasping on the edges of each word. “I was supposed to have gone on that mission to escort you two, away from the tower and away from the army. The whole thing was my idea....” Charles watches his hands squeeze into fists, white-knuckled around his reins. “Because I have failed in that, I am at your disposal. It’s my responsibility now to keep you alive until you can find your sister.”

Charles swallows and stares, and his horse comes to a slow halt. Some distant part of his mind is roaring in fear and anger, some kind of emotion he can’t completely name. His heart stuttering in his chest, worried for Raven’s safety, shaken by Erik’s declaration. For the first time in years he feels like he wants to lash out at someone, at something – at the man who has just admitted his sin. A horror he’s always fought against. His skin prickles. His horse whinnying in fear beneath him.

And all that comes out of him is a shocked _“What?”_

And he watches Erik as he hesitates, and shrugs, and then holds out his hand. “Forgive me, or not, as you wish. But know that I am yours to command, now. I don’t know if that will help you. But I am here.”

Charles turns away; he drops his reins and slides off his horse. He mumbles his sister’s name. Can this pain really be only a few hours old? He blocks it, blocks the memory of Raven’s smile, the fear and the horror that she must be feeling now. He blocks the feeling of betrayal that he already knows she must be feeling, blocks the too-sharp edges of anger and hate.

The silver cuff around his wrist, its jagged edges still cutting into his skin. Blankly, he takes it off. He calls up a tiny, intense flame in the palm of his hand, and he lets it burn hotter and hotter – of course it doesn’t hurt him, not at all, but it makes his eyes water to look at it – and then he passes the broken ends of the cuff through the fire, again and again. The acrid smell of melting, the terrible heat, and when he’s mended the cuff – the ends are rounded and smooth now – he simply clenches his fist, and the flames die into his skin. Slowly, slowly; his body remembers how to work with his own powers.

His mind is completely blank as he puts the cuff back on, as he senses Erik walking up to him.

He looks up, and the sky broods and darkens above him. He’s missed the sunset.

He squeezes his eyes shut and his thoughts are a loud clamor. He’s only met one telepath since he’s been confined to the tower, and the boy died before that year was out. Shaking in his thin robes, wracked with pain, lying in Charles’s arms as he choked on his last words. Now Charles thinks of that boy’s anguished expression, the messages he told him he was sending out to friends and family. Messages of love and fear, his emotions in a snarled knot. The messages that had claimed his life, in the end.

And now, though he knows he doesn’t even have any similar abilities, Charles tries to do the same: he thinks of Raven and he sends her his love, his worry. _Raven. Please, please, do not give in. Wait for me, dearest. It might take me a long time but I am coming for you, and I don’t care who gets in my way. I will burn the whole world, reduce it all to ashes if I must. For you._

He opens his eyes and he suddenly feels the sting of tears sliding down his cheeks.

_Please be my sister when I find you, Raven._

He doesn’t flinch when something rustles behind him. He doesn’t flinch when Erik walks around to face him. He doesn’t flinch when Erik gets on his knees before him and places a sword at his feet.

He has never even noticed that Erik carried a sword; he only remembers the knives.

He looks at Erik, at his mournful and guilty eyes.

Charles picks up the sword and with difficulty he draws it from the sheath. As he pulls at it, he knows with near certainty that he’s going to drop it. He’s so inexperienced with ordinary weapons, and the blade is so heavy. He shakes his head at himself, at his unpracticed awkwardness. A strange thing in his hand. The metal scraping loudly in the hush of the forest. His draw is nowhere near as elegant as Raven’s.

He holds the sword up between them, sends a crackle of his power into the metal, so the blade burns with a faint fire. The evening is falling; the sword lights up his face, his eyes.

Charles speaks, quietly, the flames crackling around his voice. “Erik.”

“Charles,” comes the quiet answer.

A deep breath. “I accept.”

He looks up, startled, when Erik rises and places his hands around his own on the sword. “Then the first thing is to teach you how to handle a weapon. Not this, but something you can use, if you cannot use your abilities.”

Charles nods, his lips pressed tightly together. “All right.”

///

Part III

Charles folds his arms and resheathes his knife and looks over his handiwork, and he allows a smile to tug the corners of his mouth slightly upwards. White linen, freshly washed and dried, ready to be cut up into bandages. He’s made sure to collect the right kinds of herbs and bark this time, and they’re neatly sorted into piles. Flowers in white and orange and red and purple, exhaling sweet scents into the air. Long wisps of grass and leaves, a handful of different types of seeds in black and deep green and white.

A footstep on the threshold; he turns and he lets the smile show. Jean pushes the door open a little wider and comes in, and in her arms she is carrying her daughter, wrapped snugly in a blue-and-yellow blanket. But for the happy light in her eyes she still resembles the soldier he met on that terrible night three weeks ago: the same long scar cutting across her face. The long braid of red hair, touched with grey at the temples. Her arms, corded with muscle and wounds long healed.

He remembers his first day in the hamlet with clarity: seeing Summers and Jean again. The bundle of warmth and light cradled in Jean’s arms, a child no more than six months old. His surprise fading away at the pride and love in Jean’s eyes, in Summers’s face, every time one of them looked at their daughter.

“Come for your usual visit, you two?” Charles asks kindly.

“And for some fresh air. Besides, Rachel hasn’t seen you yet today.” A low, hoarse chuckle, and Jean pushes back the cloth draped over her baby’s face. Bright green eyes, deeper than Summers’s. Rachel smiles, an easy, toothless child’s grin, and chuckles and babbles quietly to herself.

Charles snaps his fingers lightly over her face and those eyes immediately focus on him. Such innocence, such trust. She looks at him fearlessly even as he takes her from Jean’s arms, even as he drops a featherlight kiss over her brow. Her hand curling into a fist, flailing and catching him softly across his mouth. “Feisty, aren’t you,” he laughs, and he ghosts a fingertip over her upturned nose. He watches her attempt to catch his hand in both of hers, watches as she grabs at the cuff on his wrist instead and tries to pull it to her mouth, and he begins to laugh.

Jean smiles and sits down at the table, takes up the mortar and pestle. Her scarred hands sorting over the herbs and other materials laid out for her inspection. She tears a thick handful of leaves into pieces, starts to blend them with sure, practiced hands. “She likes you.”

“For some reason she’s never been afraid of my eyes. Does she respond the same way to the other mages here?” He repositions Rachel in the crook of his arm and starts rocking her gently, back and forth.

“Yes. That’s the gift we get from children. A welcome, and a kindness. Summers and I experienced it, too, when we first came to live here.”

“From the children?”

“And from their parents. From Erik, and from the other members of our company, when they were still here.”

“Hmm.” Charles bounces Rachel gently, thinks about Erik and his quiet manner, the way he often smiles at the younger ones in the mountain hamlet. Charles sometimes gets up early enough to see Erik off on his daily walk to the smithy – and it’s impossible to miss how the children flock to him, how their voices rise in a bright halo around him. Erik spends a few moments every night in whittling little toys and trinkets from wood; he listens, always sincerely, to the children’s stories and jokes. “Has he always been good with children?”

“As far as we know, yes – and like you, he seems to have an especially calming effect on Rachel.”

“A strange thing for the two of us to have in common,” he says, without really thinking about it.

“So you think,” Jean laughs.

It only takes a few minutes of happy wakefulness before Rachel yawns, her nose creasing into a thousand tiny lines, and then she falls back into a contented sleep. Charles kisses her again, lays his cheek briefly against hers. He places her in a woven basket by Jean’s feet, takes up one of the pairs of shears and begins to cut up the clean linen.

He struggles, though, and after the third failed cut he makes an annoyed sound, peers curiously at the blades. The edges are dull and grimy.

“Don’t put your eyes out,” Jean murmurs. “You’re no use to anyone blind. Didn’t Erik give you a knife?”

“I won’t – he did – and in any case these things were made specifically for cutting bandages. I think I’ll take these to be looked at,” Charles says, after a moment, and he looks up when Jean laughs quietly. “Yes? Have I made a joke?”

And he feels himself growing more and more confused and concerned when Jean puts both of her hands over her face, when he watches her shoulders shaking with silent mirth.

“They’re shears, Jean,” he says, blinking in surprise. “A simple implement, and at the moment they are not working as they should. So I will do the necessary thing and take them to the blacksmith to get them sharpened.”

“You do that,” she says, finally, and he watches her wipe her eyes. She’s still chuckling. “Off you go. And while you’re there perhaps you could ask Erik about the new armor he promised us. Yesterday he said he was almost finished.”

“I will.” Charles is baffled when he steps out the door. The fond light in Jean’s eyes, that look directed at _him_ and not at her daughter or even at Summers. The sense of her contentment, the bedrock of her heart: justice, protection, _life_ and _love_.

He has to be careful where he puts his feet; the mountains have been plagued with rain this week and there are patches of mud everywhere.

Erik has led him to this quiet little place to the distant east of the tower. The brigands who’ve taken Raven from him have been cutting a steady path of destruction, moving steadily southeast. “Moving in a wide circle,” Erik explained several times. “Centered on the remnants of an old citadel, supposed to have been some kind of palace and its outlying buildings. No one has lived there for years, as near as I or any of the others can tell, and no one knows why it was abandoned. The mountain folk who whisper about it think it’s a ghostly place.”

“Ghosts?” Charles remembers his own worry, his own fear. “No. Monsters. How very convenient for them.”

“Yes, and for us, as well, since we can use that same exact same ruse against our enemies. So, here we will stay, and plan, and prepare.”

Three weeks. He still wears a light bandage around his wounded wrist. He cleans the wound himself every morning, smoothes the salve over his skin – now he knows that Jean makes it, over the tiny fireplace in the house that he’s just left, and the making of it leaves a faint scent of pine and flowers even on the grey stone – and every day it closes is another day toward obliterating that hateful word. _Outcast._

Three weeks, and it’s already a life that is far removed from the tower’s hardships. Water in abundance, and the freedom to heat it with his powers if he needs to, which he takes advantage of when he is washing the day’s dust away. The bed is still made of straw – it has to be, since this is the warm season in these mountains – but there’s so much of it that the bed is extremely comfortable. Someone puts dried flowers in it before it’s made up into the pallets, and he actually has a blanket to lie on, something close-woven and smooth against his scarred skin. A pillow beneath his head.

Three weeks of getting used to people smiling at him, of people being friendly, despite the inescapable warning written clearly in his face. People who know what his eyes must mean, and welcome him anyway. The women tell him he doesn’t need to hide behind his long white scarf, and the men nod grave greetings. Accepting gifts of clothing and food, and once, a nosegay of flowers. The children wave at him while he’s trotting about on errands, following Summers’s requests or Jean’s or Erik’s. He still has to remind himself to wave back, sometimes, because he’s learned that it hurts their feelings when he doesn’t acknowledge them. It’s different, and it’s so strange to him, and that must be a sign of how long he’d been sealed away in that oppressive tower. He’s too used to glares and fear and hatred. Three weeks, and he’s still disconcerted here.

A knife in its protective sheath hanging on his belt, when mages were absolutely forbidden from touching weapons. Erik and Summers have been teaching him the forms for fighting with it, are waiting for him to make progress so they can move on to two-knife techniques – but it also has so many other uses, and not just for self-defense, either. Eating. The daily work of gathering herbs. He remembers using the knife to slice his own sleeve into wide ribbons, because he needed a bandage for a little girl who had stumbled over her own feet. She had looked up at him and burst into loud wails, had clung to him for comfort. The pangs of compassion and dread in his heart as he tied off the bandages and held her close. A reminder of what he was missing.

Every night, now, before he falls asleep to the quiet sounds of Erik working at the table with knife and chisel, he tries to reach out to Raven – he sends her his thoughts, he sends her his warmth and his hope and his love. The same words, over and over, and always, at the end: _Please be my sister when I find you, Raven._

He doesn’t let himself fall asleep until he’s said it.

He fetches up on a familiar set of stone steps and there’s a warmth in there that he knows almost as well as he does his own skin, that cries out happily to him. He sighs, soaks it in, allows himself a brief smile – and then he schools himself back into calmness, climbs down carefully into the smithy.

Erik is a silhouette against the blazing light of the forge. Metal glowing white-hot on the anvil, Erik’s arm coming down in a smooth arc, the _clang_ of the hammer striking, so loud that it causes Charles’s teeth and bones to rattle. Sparks and the flickering flames, and he briefly glimpses the other man’s face – a new smudge of dirt on his cheek, the muscles in his jaw jumping – and again the hammer comes down.

He uses his abilities to read his surroundings, the metal being worked and shaped – and he reaches out to the fire, lets it roar joyfully and he gentles it down just a little. The fire is giving off too much heat and the metal is starting to rebel, is threatening to warp out of shape.

_Clang, clang, clang._

Charles sits down in one of the corners as he usually does and closes his eyes. To anyone else these flames would be nearly unbearable in their roaring intensity. To him, the heat is more like a gentle touch over his skin, rippling its welcome around him, and he greets the fire with a smile. His cuff warms, and he simply redirects the extra heat into the air with a thought.

He can just barely hear Erik chuckling, his harsh breathing; he can feel him hard at work. _Intentionality. Focus._ Hands and arms in concert, creation and destruction at the same time.

Charles helps him as he always does, controls the fire so the metal stays at the right temperature. “What are you making?” He knows it’s a slightly belated question, perhaps he could have asked when he came in, but he’s still too busy, his mind working over the fire as Erik works over his materials.

Erik doesn’t answer, though.

Just in time, Charles reads the metal as Erik raises it over his head, scrutinizes it with his eyebrows pulled into a straight line of concentration. A long, thin form, and Charles reaches out a hand, palm facing out – and it glows white-hot. He distantly sees Erik nod his head in thanks – too much light, he’s blinking spots from his eyes. The hammer coming down in a final flurry of blows. It’s some kind of sword; he can sense the edge, he can sense Erik drawing the metal out, seamless and tapering. The gentle curve of the blade; its length; the fittings waiting in another corner of the forge. He can see them when Erik looks at them. Those will need a more focused and far smaller flame. He thinks of delicacy and of precious metals.

He thinks that when Erik decides to start working on the rest of that sword, he might ask if he could stay and watch.

In some distant corner of his mind he wonders who Erik will give the sword to.

And then he starts when the metal of the half-made sword shrieks, and he looks at Erik: his arm is submerged nearly to the elbow in a nearby barrel of water. The white-hot glow of the metal vanishes nearly instantly, fades and cools to a deep grey. Charles thinks of protest, of patience, and he looks at the fire and at the blacksmith. “Still working?”

“I am done for today, unless you have something for me,” Erik says, and he’s a little muffled as he wipes the sweat from his face.

“Just this,” Charles says, and he comes forward, offers the other man the shears. “I was going to use it to cut bandages, but the blades seem to have gone dull. Also, Jean asked me to inquire after the armor?”

“Finished. Summers will be by to pick them up when he can. As to the shears – why didn’t you use your knife?”

“Jean asked me the same thing; and I’ll give you the same answer I gave her. The shears still need sharpening.”

“True.” Erik grunts in amusement.

He follows as Erik motions him into another corner of the forge, someplace cooler with tables and long workbenches, where the tools were scattered over the tables, and he sits down as the other man readies a whetstone. Smooth, practiced movements. He watches Erik guide one side of the blade against the stone, and then the other. Imperfections honed away, the metal of the shears beginning to shine.

Erik squints at the blade, brushes away the shavings on the whetstone, repeats his movements for the other half of the shears. A drop of oil on the bolt holding the two blades together. It only takes a few moments, and he holds the shears back out. “Done.”

“Thank you,” and Charles smiles when their fingers brush against each other.

The dreams have not yet come back, but sometimes, when he’s falling asleep or when he’s just about to wake up, Charles sees a flash of blue-green eyes. A shadow standing over him, nothing threatening. A stern sort of kindness – familiar, now, and not unwelcome.

And yet he wakes up feeling guilty, knowing he’s settling in and mustn’t, not here and not now. Not while he imagines that his poor sister is still fighting for her heart and for her mind. He wavers between wonder and impatience and rage; he tires himself out in the early mornings, in a clearing well away and safely upwind from the hamlet. He spends hours there, thinking about his powers, trying to think like Summers and Jean: like soldiers, like people used to strategy and tactics.

Once or twice he’s let himself transform, pulled the white scarf around his face to hide his angry snarl, and he fights Raven’s captors in his mind. A fierce flame in one hand; his knife clutched tightly in the other.

He thinks of that terrible hulking mage. Eyes blue like his, and a power that frightens him the more he remembers it. He doesn’t have all of the details yet; he remembers sensing darkness around the man, more than just evil, more than just a desire to _hurt_. Terrible scars and welts and indecipherable script in black ink, reminders of cruelty all over his body.

Charles remembers thinking that at least some of those might have been self-inflicted, and here in the smithy, with Erik still looking at him, he suddenly drops his eyes and comes back to the present. He feels the fear and he tries to feed it to the flame in his heart – and if his shoulders shake while he’s doing it, Erik never says a word, never judges him.

He merely murmurs, “Have courage, Charles.” And: “Tell me.”

“You are so very different from my sister, and yet you are still so very like her,” Charles says quietly. “You and Raven. It must be some kind of gift.”

“What is?” Erik is still quiet.

“I’ve seen you talk to Summers, to Jean, to the other people here, and you encourage them,” Charles says. “That child we rescued, the one who fell over the cliff. You know what to say so they can continue. Through pain, through disaster, through their emotions. And Raven has always known how to do the same with me, right from the very beginning. I never had to say anything to her, it was something she always did by herself.” He suddenly realizes what he has just said, and he almost chokes as he hurries to correct himself. “Does. She does it by herself.”

Erik shrugs minutely. “You think it is something I do naturally because she did – does – so?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Charles, I will take that as a compliment.” And he gets awkwardly to his feet, because Erik is standing, is picking up his things and moving out into the late afternoon. “And perhaps we will find out that _she_ is wrong after all. Perhaps it is still possible that I can learn new things.”

“I don’t understand.” And how strange that is, on top of all the other strange things that have already led him to this place. To experience entirely new things, to be able to say that and not be punished for it! “You are speaking about someone else.”

Charles hurries after Erik, back to the clearing where Charles spends his mornings. Some of the grass is still charred from when he had been drawing maps and thinking about attacks, but the flowers have opened and there are many fresh scents blowing in the breeze.

Erik shrugs his shoulders, and a pair of knives falls down into his hands. Longer blades with a slight curve; the handles worked in tooled leather and silver.

Charles watches, startled and mesmerized, as Erik drops into a fighting crouch. He moves in a rough circle, eyes fixed on some invisible opponent.

He explodes, suddenly, into furious movement, the knives out and flashing, rapid silver arcs. Slash and thrust and strike and parry, the sudden shift from attack to defense as he counters and crosses the knives in front of his face. He’s moving so fast that Charles strains his eyes to keep up with him. Erik’s feet, stepping surely, carrying him on a twisting path, into and out of his opponent’s defenses.

Suddenly Erik jumps backwards and as soon as he lands he’s rolling and flipping himself back to his feet.

Charles thinks that if he had been struck by Erik’s boots, he would have been brought crashing down to the earth, and perhaps that is the point.

Erik fights with a strange serpentine grace. No movement is wasted. His entire body is a weapon. He thrusts a knife forward, as if sinking it into his opponent’s heart for a fast and clean kill, and as he’s pulling it back he’s already flipping the blade so that it faces backwards, pressed safely against his own skin, and he’s clenching the fingers of that same hand into a fist, throwing a powerful punch. The foot that was moving backward to counterbalance the punch then comes up in an ascending circle, into a hard kick.

And Charles casts back to his plans of attack, imagines himself fighting like that: heat and fire and strength, grace and guile and the sheer indomitable _will_ to win, and he mutters, “Interesting way to teach a lesson.”

“Well, that’s good, if this has worked.”

Charles stares at the slightly amused smirk on Erik’s face.

“Listen carefully. I was told this only once, and I in turn will only tell you this once,” Erik continues. “Memory is a powerful weapon, and it is also a traitorous one. A true double-edged sword. Memory can be what drives you forward, and memory can be that which holds you back. It can give you the strength to bury your sword in your opponent’s heart, and it can make you fall and bare your throat to your opponent.”

Charles smiles, after a moment, and nods. “Yes, that is logical.” He glances inside himself and he holds out his hand, and a flickering tongue of flame begins to dance around his fingers. “A better kind of weapon, is it?”

Erik nods, once. “Good; you understand faster, at least. She always wanted me to keep up, and she was always so impatient with me. But let us return to your lessons. Let me see how you do; show me your forms.”

Charles obeys and begins by dispelling the flame and dropping his hands. A deep breath as he draws his knife – soundlessly, now, he’s getting steadily better at it.

And then he raises his empty hand, clenches it into a fist as he brings it up over his heart. A flame crackling into life as he swings that fist down. The hand holding the knife flashing up into a defensive position. He stops just short of hurling actual fireballs because Erik is in the clearing with him, after all, and the wind is starting up and it will take him a few minutes to quell the fire if it begins here – but he tries his best to complete the form. Speed and precision, fire and steel, charge and retreat.

“Good,” Erik says at the end. Nods, and reaches out to tap Charles on the shoulder. “Too tense here, makes your knife hand move in restricted arcs. Breathe. I am not as good at instructing as she was, but that is excellent, for someone who could not even hold a knife to begin with.”

“You mention that woman again,” Charles says as he puts away his knife. He puts a little flourish into it, a trick he’s picked up from Jean, and Erik snorts. “And I am beginning to think that you have just been fighting her.”

“Yes. Well-reasoned.” Erik sits down in the grass. His voice drops to a deep, sad register. “My wife. A mage like you, someone who could move things with her mind. Practical. Kind. And a fierce fighter.”

Surprised again, Charles thinks back to the hut: the larger pallet Erik sleeps on, the four chairs around the table despite the small space, the neat arrangement of cooking implements near the fire. The blankets on the pallets, the slightly lopsided basket near the door. Did she make those items?

That one strange detail of Erik’s dress, something that had been off when they had met – Charles opens his eyes, points to Erik’s hands. “Those are your wife’s gloves. Too small for you.”

“Yes,” Erik says again. “All I have left of her.”

Charles knows he looks stricken now. “Dead...?”

“Murdered.” This third response is both broken and hard at the same time. “And you’ve fought her killer. The same...thing...that gave me this.” He pulls the collar of his shirt down, exposes a raised scar just above his heart. A long and jagged tear leading downwards, the edges stitched roughly closed.

The evil mage – it can’t be anyone else! Charles fights the rush of memories, the vicious attack on the inn, Raven knocked unconscious. He remembers himself screaming at her to wake up, screaming for her to save herself, before a terrible darkness came crashing down on him, before he heard Erik’s voice for the first time.

He recoils, feels the blood drain from his face, feels his hands go suddenly cold, as for the first time he remembers hearing his enemy speak, as he repeats the words in a horrified voice: “I will break her and I will cut out her heart. _I will make her mine and I will send her after you._ ” The sheer glee in the enemy’s eyes.

“I can’t let that happen,” Charles mutters. He looks down, and his hands are clenched into tight fists; one still around his knife, one beginning to burn again. He dispels the fire from his hand and touches the silver cuff instead. “I _won’t_. I _won’t_.”

“I know,” Erik says, and Charles looks at him, waits for him to say more – but there are footsteps in the clearing and he drops into a ready stance, watches Erik leap to his feet and move to give him cover.

“Erik!” Summers, looking like he’s run the whole way to the clearing. “Charles!”

“Trouble?” Erik asks.

“A whole pot of it,” Summers says. “The reinforcements that you requested have just arrived. Erik, they look like they’ve already been through a war – and worse. I thought you sent Shaw to the western companies with a message for Logan?”

“I did.”

Charles tenses at the sharp bite in Erik’s voice.

Summers must know it very well, because when he answers it’s in nearly the same tones. “Then what is he doing back here, so soon? What could have made him move so quickly? Erik, Shaw is in a lot of pain. Wound in the shoulder; whatever attacked him nearly tore his arm off. Jean is attending to him and to the others now, but you and Charles had better come and help.”

As Summers leaves, Charles starts after him. “Reinforcements?”

“It would be pure madness, not to mention folly, to storm that citadel with only four people,” Erik says. “Even if one of the four was you, knowing you’re worth ten of us. I have no intention of getting you killed.”

Charles thinks about that for a few moments, as they hurry back down into the hamlet, and murmurs, “Strange. I feel exactly the same.”

Erik gives him one of those lopsided almost-smiles, an expression that lingers for only a moment before it’s replaced by something equally familiar: worry and fear, the constant lines around his eyes.

Charles winces for what he now realizes is Erik’s grief, the source of the regret always in his voice. A wife, fallen in battle. A comrade, a friend, a partner. Sadness beyond Charles’s own worries, pain and despair. He wonders about Erik for a long moment, for his long campaign and his fight for revenge.

_He and I are so alike._

As they descend into the hamlet Charles sets aside one line of thought in favor of another: his mind is running through Jean’s inventory. How to tie off a bandage, when to change dressings, the amount of salve they already have on hand, the time they’ll need to make more. Dividing his time between taking care of the newcomers and taking care of Rachel.

Jean is barking out orders, and he and Erik and Summers rush to obey. Water, fires, food, shelter. The reinforcements have been in running battles with stragglers from their opponents’ forces, and the few mages among them have spent almost all of their strength in looking after their own.

He watches Erik talk to his soldiers, nods as Erik introduces him quietly. He tries to smile reassurance at Erik.

In the end, though, he has to work on other things, and Charles nods as Jean calls for him and places Rachel into his arms, as she sends him back to the medicine rooms. He pulls the freshly-sharpened shears from his pocket and starts making bandages, starts organizing the rest of their healing supplies. Pots of salve, jars of numbing and cleaning unguents. He sits with Rachel in her basket at his side, so he can keep watch over her. Simple and necessary work, something to quietly sink into. A foil to the intense emotions of the day. Rachel cooing to herself, a baby’s soothing murmur. He moves as swiftly as he can, uses his abilities sparingly, does what he is required to do.

When there is nothing left to do he picks Rachel up, covers her carefully in her blanket, and walks back through the deepening night to Summers’s hut.

A shadow standing in the doorway, holding his right arm stiffly at his side, covered in bandages for almost its entire length. More linen bulging at his shoulder, dark with Jean’s numbing unguent.

“Hello there,” Charles says. “I’ve just come to put Rachel to bed.”

The man sniffs and moves, and that brings his face into the light.

He is blind.

“You don’t smell like you’ve come from here. New, are you?”

“Erik brought me to this place – excuse me, please?” Charles steps past him, as carefully as he can, and he places Rachel in her bed, arranges a light blanket over her. There is a partly-shielded lantern next to the bed, and he snaps his fingers, calls up a tiny spark of flame at his fingertips, just enough to light the lantern.

“You’re from the tower, then?” the tall man asks when Charles comes back out of the hut. He is now sitting on the stone step, his face turned up, to the dark sky.

“Yes.” Charles sits down on his heels in the grass next to the man.

“And a fire-starter. I heard you snap your fingers. A characteristic gesture, don’t you think? To call up a flame as though striking a match.”

“I have always thought,” Charles says quietly, “that it was the other way around – that matches were created because people wanted to have that illusion of control over fire. To create it at will.” He takes a deep breath, and the night breezes bring him the scent of pine and distant wildflowers. “A pity that they fear fire so much, and that they cannot always be relied on to be circumspect. Fire can be used well, fire can be controlled – and yet they give in to their fear so easily, and run away when a fire merely threatens to burn out of control.”

“Humans can do that.”

“No. Not all of them,” Charles says, and he sighs and thinks of Raven. Of Erik. Of Summers and Jean and their Rachel. “And we have to work with those who do understand.”

“There aren’t a lot of them.”

“All the more reason to protect those precious few.”

The man laughs: a harsh rasp of amusement. “How can you sound so hopeful, then? You being a mage, especially one who works with fire. I’m guessing you’ve been through hell and back, and yet you still have hope. Not exactly a commodity at that tower.”

“It’s precisely because I have so little hope left to me that I must hold on to what I have left with both of my hands. With all of my remaining strength, howsoever little it might be.”

“And that is why you will live, Charles.” It’s Erik, and he’s walking up with a basket, covered in clean white cloth. Easy to pick out the details in the sparse light of the fires and of the dark lantern, which throws a muted light onto Rachel as she sleeps. He looks tired, and yet he looks satisfied. “This is Shaw.”

“I, too, escaped the tower,” Shaw says after a moment, his face turning toward him. Charles looks up, watches Shaw scratch his chin awkwardly with his left hand, imagines him with the telltale eyes. The mark on his wrist, effaced under the scars and the bandages. “I was raised there; left on the doorstep as a babe in arms. Twenty long years of being abused, of being struck again and again and then being ordered to redirect the force of the strikes in order to attack others. The cells, the collar, if I wouldn’t obey – and that often enough.

“In the end, I put my own eyes out. I didn’t want to keep following their nonsense orders. I didn’t want to become a weapon. Without my eyes I became useless to them. Exactly what I had wanted.”

“You became a weapon anyway,” Erik says, and he sets the basket down near Charles, hands out chunks of warm bread. He pulls out a tightly-wrapped cheese, a few bunches of grapes.

“At least I am now my own weapon,” Shaw says, and shrugs. “I can defend myself if I should be placed in a dangerous situation; and I can attack people who’ve put me in a dangerous situation. I don’t have to answer to anyone, and I follow whom I choose. I fight for myself and for those whom I choose to follow.”

“And at times you attack us because you perceive us as being idiots,” Erik says, dryly, and Charles ventures a smile into his own piece of bread, hearing the genuine amusement coloring Erik’s tone.

“Someone has to keep you and yours in line.” Shaw laughs again. “And don’t even get me started on Logan and his group. You should all know by now that I do what I do for your own good.”

“Does that include what happened to you this time?” Erik says after a long pause.

“Ah, well, that,” Shaw says, and he scratches his head.

The men’s voices a quiet whisper behind him; Shaw and his account of being attacked by wolves. Charles enters the house, checks on the sleeping Rachel, and then he picks up another lantern, lights it and places it at Erik’s feet. He smiles when Erik murmurs his thanks. When he sits back down he starts eating his piece of cheese.

“Were you even able to deliver my message to the western companies?”

“Of course, Erik, do you take me for a witless child?”

Charles covers a smile as Shaw sniffs in disdain.

“You can even ask Logan, since I walked in on an intimate, ah, encounter, just to deliver that message. Blood and all, mind you. I think I frightened him.”

Erik laughs, suddenly, a quiet snort and then a smile with all the lines in his face, and Charles has to keep smiling.

He feels his heart knock traitorously against his ribs when Erik turns and shares that smile with him.

Shaw coughs, once, and Charles turns sheepishly back to him.

“If I may be allowed to carry on,” Shaw says, though he clearly sounds like he’s fighting not to laugh, himself. “Logan said that he would send you a reply as soon as he had finished deliberating on it. He said he needed to consult with the other commanders.” A brief pause and Charles watches Shaw eat the rest of his bread, and then: “If even _Logan_ has to sit down and think...what exactly did you tell him, Erik?”

Charles sucks a breath through his teeth when Erik pins him down with his eyes. “I gave him orders to prepare for an attack on the tower.”

He counts the heartbeats even as he notes the upward lurch of Shaw’s eyebrows, as he looks down at his own hands.

Erik sighs, and shrugs, and says: “But there will be time enough to discuss that; that’s not the most pressing concern. There are other battles to fight, more important ones, and I have too much to think about right now. You must be tired, Shaw, I’ll take you to your quarters. And you, Charles, go on and get some rest. You’ll be spending enough time at Jean’s beck and call as it is.”

“All right. It was pleasant meeting you, Shaw,” Charles says quietly. He doesn’t quite stifle the yawn at the end of it.

“Go on with you, then; I suppose I will talk to you again tomorrow.” Charles watches as Shaw puts a hand on Erik’s shoulder and is led away.

He steps back into Summers’s home to see how Rachel is doing – she’s sleeping on her stomach now, her breath coming in soft whistles – and then he totters away, and falls mostly into his pallet, with his boots still on.

The last thing he thinks of is Erik’s eyes, how the cloud of grief had suddenly lifted from them for a brief moment. Replaced by – amusement? Respect?

He turns away from the voice in his mind that whispers to him, gentle but inexorable: _He is worried for you._

_Only Raven worries for me._

_No,_ and he’s never heard those voices so strongly before. _How very wrong you are._

He sleeps, and he dreams of Raven braiding summer flowers into a crown. It’s a distant memory, from the first year they’d known each other.

In the dream, Raven suddenly ages before his eyes, from nine to sixteen – and now she is weaving a chain, white and red and purple flowers, dark green leaves and vines. She smiles at him; she doesn’t say a word; and he watches as her scarred hands tie one end of the chain around his wrist. She kisses his cheek.

He is expecting her to loop the other end around her arm, but she shakes her head and walks away, towards a man standing in the shadow of a pine tree. The rest of the chain in a fragrant heap at his feet.

And a shadow falling over him. No dread or fear. Just something faintly familiar, a shadow of belief.

Suddenly he wakes up, a harsh start, and he surprises himself even more when he rolls off his pallet and on to the stone floor.

He looks up, and Erik’s face is upside-down, leaning over him, concerned and amused. “Charles?”

“Erik.”

“You’ve hardly slept.”

“Dreams.” Charles shrugs and climbs back onto the pallet, but he sits up, regards Erik as he clears the table – three chisels; a piece of wood roughly the size of a fist, with its bark half-peeled off – and then pads over to his own bed. “But I barely know how to interpret this. It’s not like the others – I’m not sure that it’s really about the future, not like the dreams I more frequently have.”

“Oh?”

Charles stifles a yawn, stumbles outside to the necessary. By the time he returns Erik is lying in his pallet with his eyes closed, hands laced behind his head. Charles busies himself with peeling off his boots, but the question slips out anyway: “What are you planning to do, Erik?”

He nearly jumps when Erik replies. A quiet, introspective voice. Almost distant. “I had thought that it was time for me to take my vengeance on that...that thing, that mage. For _her_ , and for myself.” Pause. “If you had asked me that at the beginning of our acquaintance, perhaps I might have had that answer.”

“And now?” Charles pulls his light blanket close. If he squints at the almost-healed wound on his wrist, he can almost see the green chains from the dream.

He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with the other end. How to understand the smile in his sister’s eyes.

Erik sounds sad. “I do not have an answer to that yet. I have been asking myself that question.”

It takes him a long time to fall back asleep. Images of Raven and Shaw and Erik chasing through his mind, their voices and their stories.

_Take this, Charles. My brother. The only one who calls me dearest._

_I put my own eyes out. I am my own weapon. The collar and the cells._

_My wife. I carry on in my parents’ memory. A star to steer by._

///

Part IV

The village transforms slowly over the next few days.

Charles wears a familiar path from his hut to the smithy to the medicine rooms to the bedsides of the men and women who have been injured answering Erik’s call for reinforcements. Sometimes he carries Rachel on a sling around his body as he ministers to the injured or as he ferries new weapons and armor to their owners. Sometimes he leaves her to her mother and carries baskets full of flowers and fruit instead.

He meets the soldiers and he wonders at their patience and stoic acceptance. None of them ever flinch at his eyes: John, the young man with his hair shaved down to stubble and a riot of dark designs written into his skin with ink; Orro, the woman with lines in her face and her hair gone almost white. One of them is a mage, but she is always being escorted away, and he doesn’t have time to catch more than her name, more than the barest details. Eliszabeth: short-haired and always smiling, her blue eyes darker than his.

The surprising thing is that they seem to worry about him – with every round he finds himself fielding inquiries about his still-bandaged wrist. Every day, he finds himself having to come up with a new answer to the question of “Who is looking after you?”

“I am doing as well as ever; I do not need looking after.”

“Trust me, you will know, if something should happen to me. Surely the children would raise such a hue and cry after me.”

“Perhaps you might inquire after Erik, instead, as he is working so hard to make sure we are all ready to fight again, and so soon besides.”

Shaw laughs his old dry cough of a laugh when he hears that particular response. “Ah, of course, you would ask us all to worry for him. A simple deflection, given his position.”

“And why not,” Charles laughs back as he ties off an older man’s bandage with a neat knot, nothing too tight, nothing that would chafe against his skin. “Not only do we expect him to outfit everyone – we also expect him to lead that attack a few days from now.”

“He is more than used to it, and so are we, in the end,” the older man, known only as “Forge”, says. “Erik has been leading us for a long time. We know what he can do.”

“I worry about him anyway,” Charles murmurs candidly. “It seems that no one does that for him.”

“Is that why you ask us not to worry about you?” Shaw asks, but not unkindly.

“I don’t really know,” Charles answers at last, later that night. They are once again eating their dinner outside Summers and Jean’s home, and Charles keeps looking over his shoulder, at how Rachel seems to be tossing fretfully in her sleep. “May I tell you a secret, since I know you are from the tower, like me?”

Shaw chuckles, finishes off his bread. “Are you asking me not to tell anyone?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I am very bad at keeping secrets, you should know that.”

“Even when it has something to do with matters physical?”

“Especially that.”

Charles looks at him again in the failing light and then he sees the laughter in the lines of Shaw’s face, and he’s torn between wanting to shake his head and wanting to smack the other man. “You are just terrible.”

Shaw sobers at that. “I know more than most that there is precious little laughter to be had in that tower, and so you will forgive me for trying to find it where I can.”

Charles nods. “That is true.” Pause, and then: “Will you hear me, then?”

“Yes, of course.” He watches Shaw scrub the back of his hand over his mouth, and nod in his direction. “And keep your secrets, to boot.”

“I worry so much for my sister; I still can’t sleep most nights,” Charles says quietly. “I don’t know what they’re doing to her. I make myself think of terrible things; I torture myself with worrying about her.

“I know that getting her back should be my goal, that she should be the only thing I am thinking about.... And yet I find myself worrying about this place. I care about the families and the children, about Rachel, who sleeps restlessly behind us. These reinforcements, though I don’t know them. I’ve only just met you, and already I worry about you – but at least you seem to know what is coming.”

“I should thank you, then,” Shaw mutters. “It is a strange feeling, one that the others have been sending out at me for a long time. I don’t know why it’s easier to take when it comes from you.”

“It’s because of our shared origins; you know I cannot lie, and you know also that the last thing I would offer you is pity, no matter your condition.”

Shaw nods after a moment, and his hand moves, and Charles reads his movements and he puts his shoulder under Shaw’s searching hand.

“And what of Erik,” Shaw asks, squeezing his shoulder once. “I assume you have been meaning to talk about him, or that your secret is related to him.”

“You would be partly right. How to say this delicately...I cannot stop myself from thinking about him, now, and I wonder why I feel this way. And I also think that any attentions from me would be unwelcome, given the unfortunate circumstances that led to our meeting.”

“What is stopping you from acting on your thoughts? You’re not forbidden from acting on them, are you? You are allowed to worry for the man, you know, even if that same stubborn fool won’t thank you for it. That idiotic misplaced _guilt_ of his. As if he had blue eyes! He could never have known what would happen, battle insight or not.”

“And yet he holds himself responsible for Raven, for me.”

“All wrong, all very wrong,” Shaw mutters, and he gestures irritably, as though he were waving a knife. “That man is as noble as they come. A needed thing, to be sure, a necessary thing, but in this instance, so misguided.” A pause, and then, “You have your work cut out for you, then.”

Charles allows himself an ironic smile. “A task that must wait a little longer, I’m afraid. As much as I would... _desire_ it,” and he chuckles when that makes Shaw snort in quiet amusement, “there are more pressing matters to see to at this time.”

A moment, and then Shaw replies, sincere and earnest. “You know I stand ready to help you, if you need it.”

“I know, Shaw.” Charles hopes the other man can hear his smile. “I will be sure to call for you if I need you.”

As he bends over Rachel, as he strokes her back with his fingers and hums in what he hopes is a soothing manner, someone coughs quietly and he looks over his shoulder, to Summers leading Shaw away, to Jean smiling at him. “She is still restless,” he reports, and he catches himself flinching, sees Jean’s slight frown. “I am sorry,” he says as quickly as he can. “I am still learning, you see. I’ve not had much experience in taking care of children.”

“It’s not that,” Jean says, and she pulls on his sleeve, guides him to sit down on the large pallet next to her. He watches her enfold his hands in his. “Charles. You were thinking that you were doing wrong by Rachel, by us? That tower has a hold on you still.”

“Another reason why you want it torn down?”

Jean smiles tightly, and nods. “One entry on a long list, and now it feels like it should be the first. It hurts me, hurts _us_ , to see you like this. You are not a slave, Charles, and we do not think of you as less than human. You have to know that we value you, that we care for you, that whatever you can do to help us is already greatly appreciated.”

“It will take me some time to throw off my old ways of thinking, Jean. Raven almost despairs of me sometimes.”

“And that is why we will be fighting for you,” she says, and he doesn’t resist as she draws him close, lets his head rest on her shoulder. “We exist because the world must not be deprived of your spirit, of your abilities, of the light in your eyes.”

Charles smells her sweat, the sweet scent of pine still lingering in her hair, and he breathes her in. His hands are still covered by hers.

A hand on his shoulder, Summers’s voice. He is standing over the two of them. “You need to rest, Charles,” he says, gently. “Come along.”

He gets up under his own power and he walks to the door, looks back at Summers and Jean. They are now both standing over Rachel’s cradle, their hands joined over their daughter.

Quietly, he says, “Thank you.”

He takes in Jean’s sad smile, the lines in Summers’s face.

When he returns to his own quarters, Erik is sitting on his pallet, caught between one shirt and another. The dirty one at his feet, the clean one hanging off his neck and shoulders.

Charles hesitates for a long moment.

“Charles.”

And the sound of his name pushes Charles into action, makes him walk over and take one of Erik’s hands. He has to force himself to speak. “Thank you. And please believe me when I say that none of this is your fault.”

Erik’s hand suddenly tightens around his, an almost crushing grip, and he feels himself being weighed down at last by the days and the emotions and the fear wrapped around his heart. He’s still talking. The words are being pulled out of him on a chain, link by link between him and Erik. “You have done so much for me, and for my sister, and I hope to spend a long time attempting to pay you back. For saving my life. For leading this fight to save hers.”

“Charles,” his name again, and he looks down, and Erik is tugging him down to sit as he puts his shirt on the rest of the way. Their shoulders brushing.

He’s so tired. He’s thinking of his sister’s eyes, of the silver cuff that he intends to return to her, of her hands on her sword.

He’s thinking of Erik, of the pine scent that clings to him, the shadows under his eyes. The memory of his lost wife.

When Charles opens his eyes he instantly knows he’s not in his own bed. More space, more warmth. Birds singing a subdued song. The golden afternoon light.

Erik is sitting at the table. The soft whining sound of metal being sharpened. His sword in its scabbard, propped up against one of the chairs.

It’s the first time Charles has ever seen him wear any armor, though he’s not wearing much. A breastplate and a matching piece for his back, already laced and buckled over his ribs. Greaves, extending upward from his boots; vambraces, fitting closely around his arms. A minimum of ornamentation – a few curved lines to fit the contours of the metal. It all looks well-made, and he wonders if Erik makes his own, or had this set made for him. In the late-morning light the metal has a dull glow.

The remnants of a meal on the table, next to Erik’s gloves: a small plate next to his elbow, two roughly carved wooden cups, and Erik looks over his shoulder at him. “Awake, then?”

“Where did you sleep, if I was here in your bed?”

“In your pallet,” Erik says, and he goes back to his work. “Eat something, and then you’re to go to Jean for that bandage of yours.”

Charles carefully peels part of the cloth back, and squints at the ruin the scar has made of his _Outcast_ brand. “It seems to have healed well.”

“Jean is an exceptional healer and a fierce warrior.”

“Perhaps Rachel will grow up to be just like her.” Charles ducks outside, washes his face and changes into another shirt.

He doesn’t normally take his meals here. The table is small, and taken up with Erik’s things. Charles takes one of the other chairs, nibbles contemplatively on his handful of bread. The plate holds about a dozen raisins, and he takes his time eating them. As he watches, Erik examines each knife to see if it’s honed correctly, then slides it into its scabbard. Metal on leather, a quiet singing note each time.

“We’re moving out at sundown as you planned?”

“Yes.”

He remembers something and touches Erik’s arm to get his attention. “Where is my cloak?”

Worried lines in Erik’s face. “I have told you that it can only hinder you in these mountains.”

“Hinder me or not, Erik, I cannot wear any armor. Not with this kind of magic. I can use only that cloak.”

Erik seems to struggle with himself, and finally he gestures at a corner of the hut.

Charles smiles and pulls the cloak out of the bedroll, throws the dark cloth on over his shoulders. He pushes Raven’s gloves into his pockets as he hurries toward the door.

“Charles.”

“Yes?”

A long moment of silence, and finally Erik looks away. “No, it’ll keep. Go to Jean now.”

Charles nods. Just as he’s stepping over the threshold he turns on his heel, goes back to Erik. For a long moment, he simply looks at him – and in the end, Charles smiles at him, as best as he can. “I’m not hiding.”

Erik finally nods back. “All right.”

He finds Jean sitting contemplatively next to Rachel. The light in the room falls on Rachel’s skin, makes her seem to glow. She is examining her fingers quietly.

Jean is already in her armor, a familiar sight from their first meeting, and Charles blinks his surprise. “You are coming with us?”

“Of course. Erik says we will need all the swords we can find, and I’m fairly good with one – or two.”

“Then who will take care of Rachel?”

“The village will,” Jean says. “You didn’t know?”

“Know?”

Jean smiles, brushes a hand over Rachel’s brow – and then passes the same hand over Charles’s forehead, over his dark hair. “Come and give me your wrist and I’ll explain. It is the same thing that happened when we left on the mission to find you.”

Her fingers deftly unwinding the bandage. The scar is a thick line, livid and purple. He can still make out the marking on his wrist, but that is because he’s grown used to seeing the hateful word every day.

It will take him some time, he thinks, to get used to this, to effectively having had the tattoo erased.

“Have you not wondered why I have no problems with caring for my Rachel,” Jean says. The cool touch of salve on his wrist once again. “My first-born child, yes – but not the first I have looked after. It is a tradition here in this village. They have always sent warriors to worthy causes, men or women, whether they could return or no. Those who stay behind do so to perform an important duty: to raise the children of those warriors.”

“Summers, too?” Charles asks. He is beginning to understand some things about this place.

“Especially Summers,” Jean laughs. “He brought me here half-dead from a battle, partly from my wounds and partly from having almost drowned in a river. He cared for me and for some of the children at the same time; he was responsible for feeding them, changing them, putting them to sleep. He comes naturally by it; better than I was when I began. He had to teach me some things that he had learned when he was raising his own brothers.”

“Where are they now?”

“The youngest one died a few years go. Gabriel. A wasting fever; we could do nothing but ease his pain. The other is serving in the western companies under Logan. A capable commander now in his own right, according to the reports. His name is Alex.”

“I hope Raven and I can meet him, some day.”

“I wish it, as well. And I’m sure Summers will think it quite an adventure.” Jean smiles when she looks at him. “I notice you are wearing your cloak again.”

“I told Erik that it is impossible for me to wear armor,” Charles explains again. “Anything I wear will either hurt me if I burn too hotly, or will make it difficult for me to use my magic at all. And I am so new to the knife that I feel uneasy about using it still.”

“All true.” Jean stands and picks up her swords, swings her own light cloak on over her shoulders, pulls on her heavy gauntlets.

At the door a boy with a streak of white in the hair at his right temple is looking in and smiling, and Jean smiles back, places a leather-encased hand on his gangly arm. “Nathan. Take care of her for me.”

“I will,” the boy says, and he blushes a little when his voice breaks halfway through the words.

Charles smiles and puts his hand on Nathan’s other shoulder, says, “Thank you.”

He is startled – and delighted – when Nathan lights up, when Nathan places a hand over his, and squeezes gently.

As he returns to his own hut, Charles looks over his shoulder and watches Jean stride up to her husband, watches her slide her hand into his. The two of them overseeing the final preparations together. The reinforcements are lining up on the narrow square. Smell of horse and metal and anticipation riding the breeze.

The sun is steadily plunging toward the distant horizon, throwing fiery shafts of light among the trees.

As he hurries back to his hut he pulls Raven’s black gloves on and feels them snug on his hands. The silver cuff flashing up at him as he moves, and he feels a tremor of fear and also a thrill of hope, and he repeats the words in his mind, a quiet loop of prayer: _Please be my sister when I find you._

Erik is waiting for him and the horses are all saddled up and waiting. He’s holding two sets of reins in his hands. There is a sword in its scabbard strapped around his waist; another, wrapped in cloth, is on his back. His knives, as they were the first time, are nowhere in sight, hidden in his shirt and in the joins of his armor.

“Shaw,” Charles calls.

“Charles.” Shaw inclines his head slightly in his direction.

“Before you mount,” Erik says, and Charles looks up. A rueful chuckle; he’ll never truly be used to Erik’s height. “I was trying to work up the courage to give you this.”

He is holding out a long length of black cloth. Embroidery at the corners, the stitches a little crooked: green vines, purple flowers. It is almost as long as the white scarf from their first meeting, but the material is much finer, soft against his fingertips.

“White will make you a target, if you were going back for the other scarf,” Erik is saying. “At least that will match your cloak.”

He winds the black scarf carefully around his neck, knows Erik’s eyes are on him as he knots it in place. “This was hers,” he says, and it’s not really a question.

“Yours now.”

“Thank you, Erik.” He looks up into Erik’s eyes, and he doesn’t know what to call that fire – but he knows that he wants it. So he nods, and he says, “We will have something to talk about when we get back, won’t we?”

“Yes,” and there is so much relief in Erik’s face suddenly, that Charles has to look away and smile.

The moment is finally broken when an amused Summers walks his horse over to them, Jean following him atop her mount, and in a casual voice he delivers his report. “Everything is ready. The troops are waiting for your signal.”

Charles looks startled when Erik says, “Don’t look to me this time. Tonight, the signal is Charles’s to give.”

“Me?”

Summers’s smile shifts. Understanding in his eyes. “Ah, yes, the sunset.”

And as one, they all turn to Charles.

Charles smiles as he gets over his surprise. He murmurs “Thank you” – and he turns away, throws his cloak back, and he raises his arms in a salute.

As darkness falls, Erik’s voice rings out sharply: “Mount up!”

A soft chorus of goodbyes behind them. Charles looks back once, and he catches a glimpse of Nathan waving at them, of Rachel sleeping contentedly in her sling.

 _I will return, and my sister with me, and Erik,_ he thinks, and he spurs his horse forward, to ride at Erik’s side.

The slight quirk to Erik’s mouth tells him he’s done the right thing.

The first night is uneventful. He spends most of it concentrating on his reins, on the rocky mountain paths. The horse is clearly more used to the road than he is, and it takes him a while to relax and to let the horse go on its own way. For all of his riding skills, he’s never been in an environment like this before.

He keeps Erik in sight at all times, even as the land around them changes, from the mountain paths to a forest full of dark shadows and old growth.

Just before sunrise, Erik raises his fist and the whole group stops, horses whinnying, riders murmuring praise and encouragement. “We’ll camp here. Stay close.” Erik is speaking normally; his voice does not carry in the thick forest – but the people surrounding him whisper his words over their shoulders, a wave of quiet murmurs rippling past, as his commands are passed to the rest of the group. “Get some rest. We ride out at sundown tomorrow.”

Charles startles a little when Jean reaches out to him, and he looks down, to where she is standing, preparing to lead her mount after Summers. “Worried?”

“Yes.”

“Come down here.”

He complies, and she draws him to her once again, this time into the circle of her arms. Her lips touching his forehead. A soft, gentle pressure. “Not alone, remember.”

“I will try my best,” he tells her, and he tries to smile at her, though he knows he fails; her mouth in a thin line as she turns away.

Honesty is the only thing he can offer these people. They are risking their lives for him, and how is that even possible, when he doesn’t know what they’ll find at the end of this road? A battle, of course. The dead and the dying and the injured. Blood on his own hands.

Charles feels a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he turns to look into clouded eyes. “Erik wants you,” Shaw says.

“And who will look after you?”

“That would be me,” and a young man steps up to Shaw’s side. Dark hair, close-cropped and curly; his skin a deep brown. “I don’t think we’ve met yet; I was out on scouting duty with one of the other mages. My name is Armand.”

“Charles,” and he shakes hands, submits himself to a hearty slap on his back from Shaw. The others are melting out of the clearing, and soon only the wind is left to pull at the plants and the low-growing trees.

He is alone, now, and he hastily pulls the hood of his cloak over his head, looks around for Erik.

“Here. Behind you.”

Erik is standing there. A solemn expression on his face. He is holding out his hand.

Charles follows him over a rocky slope and then, Erik is pointing up. “We’re sleeping in the tree. Less work for anyone tracking us. Can you still climb?”

“Of course.” He hesitates for only a moment before he drops Erik’s hand, before he’s shimmying up and into the branches. He places each foot carefully, balances his weight as best as he can. Several times he finds himself sweeping the cloak out of his way – but it does keep him warm, the dark of the cloth helping him blend into the shadows of the leaves, and he pulls it close once he’s chosen his spot.

“Charles,” Erik calls softly. He is sitting on a branch below him, is offering up a length of rope. “Tie yourself to the tree. I won’t have you falling out.”

He’s about to refuse, but then he looks down and sees that Erik is already knotting his own rope. Charles lets his protestations die in his throat and does the same, winding the rope around his waist and his shoulders, lacing himself to the trunk.

There are faces in his dreams. One of them is familiar in the way that a story is familiar; a vivid description that stirs up memories, and he remembers, suddenly, who the young man is. A scar over his eye, fighting off his opponents with a broadsword. A small buckler protecting his off hand. His sister’s beloved. He remembers Raven’s wistful voice, her wish to write letters to him.

The young man crouches and circles. Parry, strike, the slashing movements of his blade.

After a moment Charles realizes why he is moving in a spiral, moving out and then charging back in. Large and small circles: he is protecting someone. A small hand, scarred and pale. Now it is wound tightly into the back of his shirt, now it is reaching out for him. The fingers of the other hand, pressed to the side of the child’s head. Fine white-blonde hair.

A child! So close to the enemy stronghold; those enemies bear familiar markings. What is the young man thinking, bringing a child into this battle?

A voice in his head, quiet and ringing. _Hello. We’ve been waiting for you._

He startles, follows her erratic movements as best as he can. _Where are you, little one? Why are you here? This is a dangerous place and it is about to become much worse._

 _I need to be there to help you,_ she says, in a calm voice. She is speaking without opening her mouth. _You’re going to need me when you find your sister._

_Who are you?_

_I will see you soon, and then I will tell you my name, and his._ And in his dream, the little girl opens her eyes.

Blue pupils. Blue irises. And he has seen both of her hands. Her frail wrists and her pale skin. No tattoos. A foundling, an orphan, a free mage. How is she able to speak to him in his dreams? Is that her ability? He’s only heard stories of mages who could use their dreams that way. He doesn’t even know her name, nor does she know his – but she knows about Raven, and she knows something about the future.

He feels unsettled when he wakes up, but at least he knows why, and he manages to tell Erik about it as they prepare to set out on the second night.

“More dreams, Charles?” The concern in Erik’s eyes is mixed with determination.

“Yes. We must be on the lookout for two people. A boy, about Armand’s age, or a little older. Raven has told me about him.” He manages not to blush when he remembers what she had been talking about: the first night she’d ever spent with a man. “And this young man will be traveling with a child. A girl, a mage like me. And – she’s never been to the tower. She’s managed to survive outside it for almost as long as I have.”

“What can she do?”

“I don’t know, and I would very much like to find out,” Charles says, and he shakes his head impatiently. “We’ll know soon enough, I suppose. In the dreams, she could speak directly into my mind; I never heard a word.” he pauses for a moment and then barrels on: “Erik, she said we’re going to need her, and probably her protector too, when we get to the citadel.”

“If he can fight, if he’s willing to join us, I can use him,” Erik says. “As for the girl, she will have to be your responsibility. Yours and Shaw’s.”

“Until I can find Raven, and then I must take care of _her_.”

Erik opens his mouth again, looks like he’s about to say something else – and then he shakes his head and walks away, and Charles blinks in confusion.

“Don’t mind him,” and he jumps a little, but it’s only Summers, peering kindly at him. It is not the first time Charles has wondered if he has any problems with his eyes; he remembers Summers missing the target by a wide margin when he was practicing with his bow. He also remembers the second arrow, quivering in the bull’s-eye; the _third_ arrow, splitting the second right down the middle. “He’s worried. For you, for us.”

“Do you think he will accept my sister, if we can get her back?”

“I don’t see why not. She’s a fine fighter, and the two of you make a good team all on your own. An army of two: a girl with a sword and you with your powers. But more importantly: you’re good people, you and your sister. A fine addition to the village, if you plan to stay. “

He almost laughs; he’s never been described that way, or _fondly_ , before. “If we can get her back – she and I will have to talk about that.”

“Naturally,” and Jean joins them, puts her hand on Charles’s shoulder. “But I suspect I would like it very much if you stayed on with us. Rachel likes you, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t like your sister, as the two of you are very much alike in your temperament.”

That makes him smile, and bow his head, and he lets the blush show on his cheeks. “And I like Rachel and the village very much. But I would also like to see the world, to travel if I can, if people can accept my blue eyes. I know it’s a distant goal, perhaps an impossible one, but if there is one thing that living in the village has taught me, it is that I should be allowed to dream.”

Charles almost laughs; it’s a disjointed little speech, and he’s not even sure he’s making sense – but then he’s surprised when Jean kisses him again, on his cheek this time, and Summers is ruffling his hair. That big hand that quickly travels back down to his shoulder. He leans on them for comfort.

Even as he’s scrambling away after Erik, he feels Summers and Jean’s eyes on him, and he draws a certain kind of strength from them. A familiar strength: he once drew it from Raven, and now he’s drawing it from them.

He looks inside himself, at the banked fires of his heart, and he smiles and he lets himself _believe_.

He might know what he’s looking for, and he doesn’t even mind when Erik keeps asking him if he’s leading them in the right direction – but still, it’s a relief when it only takes them three days to find the girl. And, in her wake, the boy with the dark hair and the white jagged line curving over his eye. Both of them in dark cloaks. The girl’s feet wrapped in tattered boots, her dress stained and grimy around the hems and the sleeves; the young man’s hands never straying far from the broadsword belted to his waist, a single long knife strapped across his chest.

Charles looks up in surprise as Erik and Summers dismount, leading their horses to a rocky outcrop. The two men standing together, identical frowns as they look down into the valley. The clearing where they have stopped is only a day or two away from their objective: the ruins of the citadel, a forbidding sprawl of madness.

But it is the girl who captures all his attention. Her fine blonde hair like a pale cloud around her face. Scars and scratches all around her knees; mud and dirt all over her face. The startling clarity of her eyes, looking at him; the unmistakable blue-in-blue of a mage. The slightly imperious lilt to her voice. “You are the man from my dreams,” she declares, and she looks at him fearlessly. “What is your name?”

“I am Charles,” he says, and then he snaps his fingers. The thin tongue of bright flame sparks at his fingertips, glows and grows hotter: orange-gold-red-white. And then he lets the energy go with a soft breath, watches for the little girl’s reaction.

She smiles, and suddenly she is beautiful. “So that is why I have been seeing you with wings of fire. My name is Emma,” the girl says, and she takes the hand he used to light the flame, and examines it.

Charles looks up, at the young man, and he says, “That scar over your eye – I’ve had it described to me before. I know someone who knows you.”

He startles. “Me? Who? Not just Emma? She’s been telling me to watch out for you – we’ve been heading toward you for the past day or so.”

“Not just Emma. My sister – her name is Raven.” He has to swallow past the lump in his throat, past the automatic invocation that loops incessantly at the back of his head. “She has described you to me; she says she knows you.”

“Raven,” the young man mutters, terrified and anxious and hopeful all at once. “Where is she? I’ve been looking for her everywhere; I heard that she had been taken! The army has already declared her _dead_! I didn’t want to believe it. I deserted to try and look for her.... Are you trying to find her, too? Do you know where she is?”

“Yes, I do – she’s down there, hopefully waiting for us,” Charles says, and he gestures to the valley. His heart goes out to him even as he offers him his hand. “Has she mentioned me to you? I’m her brother. My name is Charles.”

“I, no, I can’t remember – my name is Azzel,” the young man says, and he attempts to smile. His armor is scuffed and dented in a few places. “We’ve been traveling together, Emma and I, since I found her a week or two ago.”

“He has been protecting me,” Emma says, and she immediately goes to Azzel’s side, clinging to his hip.

“Are you both all right?” Charles asks after a moment. “Do you require anything? Food, water, rest? Are you wounded or in pain?”

Emma looks down at her feet. “Tired. We have been walking and fighting for days.”

“I can help you with that,” and Charles smiles as Jean joins them and Shaw along with her, his hand braced on her shoulder.

“My name is Jean, and this is Shaw. If you need anything for your feet, let me know. I am a healer, and I might have something to help you with that.” Pause, then she adds: “And I think we can risk a fire tonight, some hot food. What do you think?”

“Just for us?” Emma asks, and Charles nods in understanding, remembering that he had once been suspicious of kindness, too.

“Just for you,” Shaw says. No trace of patronizing in his voice. He’s already oriented in Emma’s direction; Charles thinks he must have been listening hard for her. “After all, you said it yourself: you’ve been hard at work.”

“Yes.” Charles watches as Emma peers curiously up into Shaw’s face, old before its time. “Your eyes – something is wrong with them?” Her voice gentles and lilts.

“Charles tells me you’re a mage, too,” Shaw says. “Tell-tale eyes, right? Everyone knows what blue-in-blue eyes mean. So tell me, how have you been hiding them?”

“She’s wearing a cloak, Shaw,” Charles says. “Like me.”

“I used to have blue-in-blue eyes, too,” Shaw says quietly. “I blinded myself in order to escape from the tower. Now, when I walk through a town, I am to be pitied – but I am not to be hated or feared. It is no escape, of course.”

A look of horror on Emma’s features; for a moment, she looks like the child she is. “You’re from the tower?”

“Shaw and I both come from there, yes.” Charles peels off his glove, shows her his near-erased tattoo. “This group that I am traveling with – they took me away from it. They gave me my freedom.”

“Enough storytelling, that can wait until later. Come along,” Jean says, quietly cheerful, and she leads Emma and Azzel toward a small fire in a protected area of the clearing. Emma sits down with an expression of relief on her face, and Azzel nods off almost immediately.

Charles smiles and takes a blanket from Jean’s supplies and puts it around Azzel’s shoulders. “You are, after all,” he whispers, “not too different from me, if you love Raven.”

When he looks up, Erik is sitting in the circle, talking to Emma. “I should not disturb your companion’s rest if he is to be of any use to me, little one, so I will have to speak to you directly, and I hope you will not mind me asking you questions.”

“Ask away,” Emma says. “I have seen you in my dreams, too.”

“Doing what?”

She smiles. “I cannot say. I will not allow the future to change.”

“You have already changed it,” Shaw says, mildly. “He knew nothing until you told him about your dreams.”

“As I was meant to,” Emma says. “More than this, I cannot reveal.”

“My sister....” Charles says, suddenly.

“Is shielded,” Emma says, and her smile vanishes, becomes a worried little frown. “That entire citadel is shielded from all kinds of magic, and guarded by an army of madmen. If there is anyone inside who can still think for themselves, if there are people there who are still resisting, my dreams cannot find them.”

“How close have you come to it?” Erik asks, his brows drawn together.

“Very,” she says, and she shivers. “We have already been in the forest ringing it – that was where Azzel found me.”

“That close?” Shaw says. “Can you give us proof you are not working for our enemies?”

“Yes.” And she looks straight at Charles. “Show them the dream.”

For answer, he points to the flames, and they crackle and turn into flickering images; he shows them the entire conversation he and Emma have shared, shows them the men Azzel was fighting. The unmistakable bloodlust in the enemies’ faces, Azzel’s strategy and tactics.

“I recognize the forms he uses,” Summers says after a moment. He is standing over Jean, his arms folded over his chest. “Particularly the way he mounts his attacks. Azzel at least is on our side.”

“And you?” Erik says to Emma.

To her credit, she never flinches. “How can I convince you?”

“There is no way you can do that,” Charles says. “Not until your dreams can manifest, I am guessing. Any answers we ask of you here, we will have to take on faith – unless....”

Shaw startles, and Charles knows even before he looks that the other mage is peering worriedly in his direction. “They cannot have taught you that, Charles.”

A cold weight strangling his heart, and now it is Charles’s turn to shiver. “Nothing could have stopped them from doing it, Shaw, and I was one of the strongest the tower had ever seen. They could, and they did. They _forced_ me to learn it. I fought them every step of the way, to no avail.”

“What are you talking about?” Erik asks, sharply.

Charles draws a line across his throat. “Collar,” he says, and he can hear his own voice shaking in fear. “I was taught this spell – and worse, to use it on others in the tower. It is a painful kind of magic that chokes off its prisoner’s abilities and inflicts pain on them if they try to escape it, or use any spells while caught in it.”

“It also has the equally salutary effect of forcing its prisoner to answer all questions truthfully,” Shaw said bitterly, his face pale and bleak. “It is the real reason behind the story that says mages can never tell lies. Charles. If you know that magic, then you can’t say you escaped the tower unharmed.”

“I never said I did. You would know how long it would take for wounds such as those to heal.” Charles closes his eyes, remembers a brief flash of pain. “And the collar is the worst kind of wound, yes.”

Emma looks frightened. “I would have been compelled to learn that?”

“If you had been taken to the tower. If you had been strong enough. If they thought you might be able to use it correctly, never mind your own opinions.”

“And are you going to use it on me?”

“I do not wish to,” Charles says. “I only ask that you tell us the truth.”

“I am,” she says. “Please believe me.”

Charles thinks about that for a moment, looking her straight in the eyes, and then he transfers his gaze to Erik. “Do you trust me and Shaw?” he asks him.

He never hesitates, and Charles feels a flame spark in his heart when Erik responds: “With my life. And I am not the only one who would say it.”

Jean nods firmly. “That’s true – because I have already entrusted my life and Summers’s to you.”

“Then you’ll let me take charge of Emma, until we get to the citadel.”

“If you’re sure,” Erik says simply.

Charles keeps looking him in the eyes. “I am.”

“Done. Shaw, assist him if you can.”

“Of course,” is the solemn reply.

The next night, Charles watches as Erik sends out the orders for the scouts to pull back to their location, as he orders some of the other soldiers to hide the horses. The soldiers, picking up on Erik’s mood, are performing drills and checking on their weapons and armor, and suddenly the camp is a hive of silent, frantic activity. Jean is sorting through her medical supplies even as she keeps an eye on the sparring bouts between Summers and Armand and Azzel. Erik joins the fray shortly thereafter.

Charles startles after a moment as Emma slips her tiny hand into his. “I do not have to dream to know you are bonded to him, somehow,” she says.

“Everyone in the camp knows,” Charles says, and he lets a smile appear, briefly, on his face. “He and I certainly do.”

“So why not act on it?”

“Your dreams have made you very _knowledgeable_ for a child,” he says, laughing a little. “Does it not become tiring?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “All the time.”

“Ah,” he says, and then he sobers. “I promised him I’d talk to him, but only after I find my sister. She is the only family I have left in this world, you see – and we are not even related to each other by blood.”

“How long has it been,” Emma asks in an unsettled voice, “since she was taken?”

“A month or more,” Charles says.

“And you believe that she will still be your sister if you find her down there?”

“I have to.” Charles pulls away, and he looks down and isn’t surprised that there is a faint red glow around his hands, which are clenched into fists. “I would not know what to do were I to find her otherwise.” Horror settling in his heart as he catches himself contemplating the unthinkable, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the prick of tears. “Except perhaps steel myself, in order to perform a final act of mercy.”

Emma can only peer at his hands as she waits for him to let go of his flames – and then she clutches at his wrist again. Her hands are warm against his hot skin.

“Emma,” and they both start, and Charles looks up.

“Azzel,” she says, and she runs to him and when he gets down on his knees she scrambles up his back, clings to him. Her eyes are still solemn, and still fixed on Charles’s face.

“Can I help you?” Charles asks, politely.

“I...I thought I should talk to you about Raven, about our relationship.”

He nods. “Of course, although I will thank you to leave out the, er, more delicate details?”

Even Emma giggles at that, and Charles can feel his own blush traveling down his skin, mirroring Azzel’s own embarrassed smile.

“She mentioned to me that she was planning to write letters to you,” Charles murmurs as they sit down near the fire. He cools the flames a little. The air has a pleasant nip to it, this early in the evening.

“I wonder if she ever received any of mine,” Azzel says. “I tried to write to her every month or so, but I never received any replies.”

“I had not even learned of you until recently; I’m afraid I don’t know. Perhaps we can ask her.”

“If we can get her back.” The other man looks both unhappy and angry.

“I will hold on to my hope until the very last moment.” Charles says it like a promise to himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Erik straighten, and regard him with an unreadable expression.

That night, he sleeps fitfully; and the second time he wakes up he swings himself out of his perch for the night, walks among the other sleepers in the clearing. Emma and Azzel, curled together in a makeshift nest of blankets, with Armand and another boy standing watch over them; all four faces lit up by the embers of the fire.

Silent footsteps take him to the edge of the cliff that hides their camp from the citadel.

He has never been any good at scrying spells, and at the tower this failure had seen him punished any number of times. Tonight, he doesn’t dwell on that, and he narrows his eyes and looks down into the citadel, darker than the night itself at this distance. Plans within plans churning in his mind, the ghost echoes of his dreams fluttering just out of sight. Jean and Summers are to lead a diversionary attack on the main gates. A smaller group, led by Erik and Shaw, to scale the walls on the other side, to drop into the enemy camp and strike at its bleak, rotten heart.

It doesn’t matter if he will be sent with Jean or with Erik. The road is already laid at his feet, and he knows what the plan must be – even if he doesn’t have all the details he does have the outline, a faint idea of what Erik might already have in mind.

All he can think of, even now, is the fire within him, singing songs of rage and revenge. His hand squeezes the hilt of his knife, once, and he forces himself to go still.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and he nearly lashes out – he can feel his fingertips spark with light and heat – but he takes a sudden breath; he knows who is there, and he forces himself to relax.

“If you worry any more, the entire camp will start reacting to you,” Erik murmurs.

“What?”

“Some of us are worried about you, Charles. And though we’ve noticed that you can hide your emotions well, they do still carry throughout the camp.”

“I had good teachers.”

The hand on his shoulder shakes him, a little, and he cuts his eyes to the side, watches as Erik attempts to smooth away his smile. “Good, you’re trying to make a joke out of it. Weak as that was, it is still better for the mind than this endless loop of fear.”

“Erik.”

“I am not making light of your problem, Charles, and I would be the first to thrash anyone who would insult you now.”

“I know.” Charles looks at his hands, scrubs them down over his face. He lets his legs give way and he drops as gracefully as he can to the rocky ground, folds himself into his customary half-sitting, half-kneeling position. As he does so, the citadel vanishes from view below the edge of the cliff.

He takes a deep breath, looks inside himself for the flame, feeds his fear and his hatred and his worry into its burning heart.

The voices in his mind whisper to him. The songs are gone and in their place: a soothing soft crackle and hiss. The memory of Raven’s smile, her hand in his hair as they were wrestling in the road, trying to sing a folk song and failing at it, her arms and her legs working smoothly as she climbed a tree. The chain of flowers from his dreams of her.

Memories whirling through his head: everything he’s learned from his lessons with Erik and Summers. Jean’s scar seeming to darken with the frown on her face. He has even seen Shaw fight, once, and it seemingly doesn’t matter whether he’s fighting hand-to-hand or with weapons. A complicated series of rippling movements, and anyone who strikes him is in turn knocked back by his magical abilities.

Charles looks down, and now, the battle’s truly begun. Men and women screaming challenges and orders; the clash of swords; the unmistakable flares of magical power. Shadows and fire painting the walls of the citadel in lurid reds and blacks.

He is soaring above the fray and he can hear the crackle of his wings mixing with the roar of the wind in his ears. His eyes are fixed on the spearhead of their company, Jean and Summers in the lead. The gates are in ruins around them, and they are fighting off the vanguard of the enemy forces. Armor and weapons shivering to pieces under a series of well-placed blows. Armand swings his war hammer in long and vicious arcs, and Charles smiles, snaps his fingers, sends a thread of fire screaming towards him, hot enough to make the blunt head burn with an orange glow.

He thinks he can read Armand’s lips, his cry of “Thanks!”, before his attention is diverted back to the group of enemy forces being held in reserve, closer to the steps of the citadel. Summers shouting orders, the fighters fanning out under his direction, and Charles throws up a barrier of flames between them and the black-armored brutes.

He hears someone laugh, a high and pleased note over the destruction, and he doesn’t know who it is.

 _Don’t be silly, of course you do,_ a voice says in his mind. _That was partly you and partly that girl you found. Emma, right? Isn’t she with Erik and Shaw?_

He just barely covers his surprised gasp. _Eliszabeth? Yes, that is her name, Emma – Shaw is protecting her today. I laughed?_

 _Yes, you did. I think other people might be frightened by you – but if only they knew what I could see in your mind now._ The image of her smile flashes before his mind’s eye. He’s just found out what she can do: Eliszabeth has the ability to send and receive mental messages between the members of the group. It’s no wonder the village protects her, and it’s no wonder she’s an important asset to Erik’s forces.

He looks down, and the knot of soldiers moving past the gates is the one that contains Eliszabeth. Heavy armor on her escorts, a slow and steady pace forward. Standing orders from Erik, naturally – and as Charles watches, an attacker comes up to them screaming. A smooth, practiced motion and the group around her closes ranks with a loud clash of shields, and there’s a flash of a sword blade, and the screaming suddenly stops.

 _Cut his head off,_ Eliszabeth says.

 _I saw it,_ Charles says.

Another attacker is dispatched, and this time Charles is quicker. He still has his hands full: maintaining the shield in the center of the battleground for Summers, protecting Jean with a halo of fire as she fights her way towards the doors of the citadel, providing cover for Eliszabeth’s group.

And all the while, the awareness thrumming vainly in his skin, the one impulse he cannot act on right now: the urge to find his sister.

If he tries to finish off the attack before it’s time, if he decides to challenge the enemy now, he’s going to put Erik and Shaw and Emma and Azzel and the few soldiers who have gone with them in mortal danger. Erik’s plan – and also Charles’s own. He has caught glimpses of this battle in the last few dreams; he knows that he’s going to have to endure a particularly horrific ordeal before this is all over.

He still doesn’t know if he’ll find Raven, but he pushes the rogue impulses away. Shielding his thoughts as best as he can from the other mages.

 _What can you see now?_ he asks Eliszabeth, instead.

 _That great firebird of yours,_ she says promptly. _An image of a sword. An image of chains. What are you thinking about?_

 _Strategies,_ he says. He is not as cunning as Shaw, and he isn’t even lying, and he sends Eliszabeth the mental image of his hand on her arm, a comforting squeeze, before he withdraws from her mind. He soars into the sky, watches as the battle rages on. The defenders pouring from the castle. Erik’s people are trained well, and the fight never falters. Every slow step forward marking the ground they have gained. He strikes down the flankers with flames like razor-sharp knives.

He’s swooping lazily, a flaming shield against the archers shooting at Summers and Armand, when: _Alert! We can’t turn back! Rearguard incoming!_

_Eliszabeth? Tell your escorts to close ranks around you. Are you all wearing your cloaks and gloves?_

_Yes!_

_Protect yourselves and keep moving forward as ordered. Leave the rearguard to me,_ Charles says, and he smiles and he looks inside his heart. The impatient voices inside his head. _You are exercising too much control. Let us free!_

 _I’m just about to do that,_ he tells himself, and he swoops down, wind rushing in his ears. Eyes moving left and right, rapidly, counting the enemy soldiers in the advancing group. When he lands, he sends a huge wave of flame sweeping before him, and the answering shrieks of pain and anger make him smile.

Through the smoke and the fire he sees his enemies. He stretches his senses out to them. Stink of hatred and fear, the sheer _rage_ in their leader’s face. Whatever language that leader is using to shout orders and abuse at them, it’s not a language Charles knows, and he has tried to learn the many languages taught and spoken at the tower.

There is a sneer on that leader’s ash-smeared face as she advances on him. An ugly smirk. The spears in her hand are broken off roughly at the ends. Old blood like rust on the barbed edges. A naked knife thrust into her belt. What little armor she’s wearing is tattered and fraying; holes over heart and throat and a long, jagged tear down her sleeve.

“Come to die, little torch?” she sneers, and she puts one of her spears to her mouth, licks carefully over the flat of the spear point. “Come to die and bring others to die with you?”

Charles merely smiles and he centers himself. Draws his knife with one hand.

He holds his free hand behind his back, and he starts moving his fingers in a series of rapid little movements. He’s creating a weapon: a long cord of flames like a lash, weaving-sliding over the ground as his fingers twitch. A distant memory of his aunt spinning, with the distaff at her right hand and the spindle in her left, and the yarn flowing from her hands – and he uses the memory to spin his flame out.

Flash of a spear aimed at his throat and he ducks cleanly out of the way, completely entranced by his fire now, moving as rapidly as the flicker and flash of the brightly burning light.

He dances through Erik’s forms and the flames flow and move with him, errant ends of the flame-lash spinning through the air as he moves.

His opponent shrieks suddenly and he smiles at the sudden flash of white-hot flame striking her shoulder, sends the bolt streaking on past her. It lands at her companions’ feet and Charles thrusts his knife forward, and the rest of the rearguard vanishes in a soundless burst of pure light.

When the voices inside his head laugh Charles laughs, too, and he salutes his enemy, holds the knife with its point up in front of his face. “You are alone now. And I am alone,” he says. “Shall we dance?”

Instead of a coherent answer he gets a wordless howl of naked outrage, and he watches her stumble clumsily, charging him – and he whips his free hand around, the lash of fire screaming as it winds itself through the folds of his cloak, leaving it unharmed, and finally the free ends catch around the woman’s throat, choking off her cry. Her skin begins to burn and blister, her eyes bulge as hate becomes fear, and he knows his eyes are glowing as he reels her in, making her pitch forward and when she suddenly falls at his feet, he drives his knife in through her shoulder blades, straight down and he can _feel_ the blade as it comes out of her chest.

She gurgles once, and he lays her gently onto the ground; he touches the back of her head, and her body bursts into silent flames.

 _You’re clear,_ he tells Eliszabeth. _Any other attackers from this side?_

He’s about to repeat himself when she says, _All clear._

_Erik’s group?_

_Safe for now, too._

_Good. It means fewer and fewer things to worry about._

He resettles his cloak and his scarf and he takes to the skies again, fiery wings lifting him easily, and he surveys the field of battle. In the few moments of his fight against the leader of the rearguard, Summers has rejoined Jean, and their group is attempting to break down the doors into the citadel. Eliszabeth and her armored escort are halfway across the field.

And that’s when it hits him: a sharp strike of worry down his singing nerves.

Where is the leader of the enemy forces? Where is the mage with the tattoos and the crazed eyes, where is he with his aura of pain and revenge and loathing?

A high, piercing scream, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

Charles clutches at his head, screams back his own pain, screams against his companions’ pain – he can hear Erik and Emma, too, and a voice he knows only all too well, the dark rush of agony curling like claws around his throat – and he falls to the ground. His flames only just catching him in time.

He looks up, and the blood drains from his face, and he draws breath in a panicked rush, fury and shadows making him want to scream again....

The world falls into black, suddenly, silently.

///

Part V

 _Clank,_ the first sound he hears, then the sound of a heavy door being pulled open.

Charles opens his eyes. Everything is black. Around him, murmuring, faint and steady.

He raises his hand and he snaps his fingers.

He screams. Pain! A dark fire sweeping down his fingers, burning his heart!

Prick of fear at the corners of his eyes, and he raises his trembling hands. One around his throat, around the bare skin – ash and grime peeling off onto his fingertips, staining the lines in his palm. One to his eyes, gathering tears.

Shame and anger, fear and worry, the overwhelming memory of a group of soldiers: a man and a woman, scars on their bodies, hands joined over a child with vivid green eyes. A blind man, hand-in-hand with a little girl, her hair almost glowing, fine blonde in firelight. A blacksmith with scarred hands and arms, swords belted to his side and strapped to his back.

His sister, in her leather armor. The silver cuff, snug on her wrist – and that hand is clasped tightly in another’s. The boy next to her has a scar over his eye, is bleeding from a wound in his shoulder.

He opens his eyes, and – _No, no!_

Back in the tower! His birthday is a distant memory. Gray, gray, even the hangings and the carpets are gone, as he walks through the corridors of the tower. Men and women in tattered clothes. Downcast blue-in-blue eyes, bruises and wounds everywhere he looks.

This season, the tower has been pushing them all to their limits. Every day, he limps back up the winding stairs to his cell, and every day, he sheds even more blood. His right leg is broken and it’s been hastily set, and they’re still making him fight.

The mage who is watching over the battles is a huge man, his face a hideous collection of scars and ink and other markings. His eyes are far darker, a more menacing blue, than everyone else’s. The rest of his face is difficult to look at, ruined by age and injury. A long-bladed knife at his waist, which he has no reservations about using on those he deems weak or unworthy. Charles has felt its bite several times. The tower nurses are wearing themselves out healing him, healing the others.

“Again,” that mage roars, and Charles swallows and turns his back on his opponent. This one can summon and control the wind, and he’s especially clever with it; he likes to distract people with powerful whirlwinds and then, once they’re off guard, he runs in and pummels them with his fists.

Charles is trying to keep up, he’s using the winds as fuel and aid for his own flames, but when he blinks he knows he’s made a mistake – and he’s down in the dirt once more, grit between his teeth, and his opponent is raining hard blows down onto his back.

He shouts, “Stop!” but to no avail, and it takes him every ounce of his remaining strength to call up his flame, to form it into a blade, and he lashes out blindly at his attacker.

The only relief that it gets him is a pained howl, the weight jumping off his back.

The hulking mage laughs, and Charles tries to raise his eyes enough to see him.

And Charles is suddenly looking into his own face – twisted and evil and delighting in his fall.

The weight of it crashes down on him and he lies in the dirt, unmoving. He can feel the bruises blooming, overlaying the other wounds up and down his back.

He doesn’t have the strength to get up.

Someone is calling his name, far away.

_I know that voice._

_Someone I love._

Another voice, a man’s voice, talking about knife forms, demonstrating a particularly complex movement. Glitterflash of light off a long blade, and on the ground he squeezes his eyes shut.

And Charles wakes up. Someone is calling to him. A familiar and beloved sound.

“Dearest!”

Raven! Raven at his side, her eyes old and haggard – but she is herself, and she is looking at him! Lines of worry in her scarred face, an X cut into her cheek, her wounds filled with dirt. Bloody scabs.

He looks up at her, raises his hands to her face, and she smiles and she covers his hands with hers, she leans over and touches her forehead to his. “Charles,” she says, and her voice is a broken rasp, a voice that he remembers from his dreams, from his memories. “It’s me, it’s really me, I’m still myself.”

“How....?”

“They tried their hardest to break me – but I thought of you, and I waited.” She smiles, and he turns away as his tears begin to fall. Blood on her teeth, freshly drawn. “Even when they beat me over and over again. Even when they showed me such terrifying visions – they kept telling me that you would destroy the world! But I thought of you, Charles, and I fought back every time I could.”

“Oh, my sister,” and he kisses her forehead, her cheeks. “I am so weak, and I cannot help you now.”

“What?”

He draws a line over his throat. “He has me collared, Raven. _Him_ – he’s been putting me through nightmares, I was dreaming about getting killed in the tower, and I heard your voice. I heard Erik’s.... That was how I woke up.”

He doesn’t mention the last part of the dream, the part where he looked up into his own face, mutely begging himself for mercy.

“Erik?”

“My protector, like you,” he says, hoarsely, and he still feels the dream-wounds when he lifts himself partway off the ground.

The devastated courtyard all around the two of them. Summers and Jean, holding on to each other for support, looking horrified. Eliszabeth and her escort, the men and women around her, heavy armor interspersed with bows and swords, all weapons at the ready.

Half the arrows are aimed at the source of the shadow in which he is lying.

Half the arrows are aimed at him.

He levers himself up onto his hands and his knees, and Raven’s arm around his shoulders pulling him up. He stands on his feet, shaking like a leaf.

Charles looks up, and there is the mage, and there is the chain in his fist that leads to the very real collar around Raven’s neck. The staff in the mage’s other hand. Even with Charles’s magic smothered and buried, he knows that to be the focus of his enemy’s power.

He can hear the voices of the flames burning around him. Distant whispering on the edges of his mind. Control, he must have control. A subtle fight against the magic that’s been imposed on him. And he stands his ground. He looks into the mage’s eyes.

Another flash of Erik in his mind, talking about memory, about a double-edged sword, and he smiles, though it hurts his mouth to do so, and he touches his tongue to a tooth and it’s moving, a little. He must have gone down hard, though his last real memory is of the scream, of not knowing who had been in such pain.

 _Or perhaps that voice was me, screaming,_ he thinks. He closes his eyes, he raises his hand in front of his face, palm pointing down.

And for the first time the enemy mage speaks. Not the high, cold voice he hears in his own self-imposed dreams.

“Are you truly a fool?” A low voice, dark and deep, drugging. “Even now you can feel the grip of the collar around your heart, around the source of your powers. Will you attack me, knowing I have you in the palm of my hand? That I can just as easily strike at you with your own magic?”

The mage laughs, and he twitches his staff and a bright flame appears at the end of it.

Charles drops his hand, puts it over his heart, feels violated, feels _hurt_. The mage _reaching into him_ , calling out his flames without his consent. Bile rises up in his throat and he clutches at Raven’s hand, doubles himself over with the force of his own coughing.

“I can do worse to you, and you know it,” the mage says, and Charles spits helplessly into the dust. “So much worse. More terrible than anything the tower could ever dream up. Ironic, is it not? It was the tower that created this beautiful spell, but it was not the tower that refined it, not the tower that brought out its fullest potential. Only I have done that.”

Charles surprises himself when he staggers upright, when he coughs the burrs out of his throat, and says, “And to what purpose would you do such a thing? This is nothing but pain, nothing but suffering. Even if you could find someone willing to be collared, there is only so much you can do before a mage starts to fail. Our powers are not infinite; they were never meant to be.”

“How little you know.”

Charles feels his blood run cold, but he keeps up his brave face anyway. Not knowing where Erik and his group are, not knowing what else they plan to do now that Raven is here, he has to keep stalling. He has to give them time.

“Charles, stop, _please_ ,” Raven is whispering furiously behind him. She’s bracing him, she’s keeping him on his feet, and he can feel the fine tremors shaking through her arms. “What are you doing?”

“What I can,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because I have to.” He looks into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”

“Always.”

“Then wait with me. Stay by my side. Help me fight – him.”

She looks doubtful, but at last she nods, and he squeezes her hand, weakly.

Charles has not often had occasion to be collared – but he has learned something about it, and it’s a piece of knowledge that he has never shared with anyone.

And now he is gambling his life, Raven’s life, his friends’ lives, on that piece of knowledge.

In the tower, the first reaction to the collar is always naked, screaming fear. Second comes an abrupt and almost always complete submission. Only a handful of teachers at the tower are given leave to impose it, and only three of them are allowed to even _teach_ the spell to others.

He remembers his first time in the collar vividly; he had refused to eat in the first few weeks after being brought to the tower. Refusing to follow orders, refusing to even respond to anyone or anything. He remembers being dragged out of his quarters, the pity and the apathy on the faces of the guards. His own blank look at the mage casting the spell on him.

And then the sudden surge of his own power, blinding flames and heat all around him. His captor’s shock and sudden glee. The sensation of someone taking his heart in their hands, examining it, using it.

He remembers being compelled to eat, to drink. He remembers being sick, afterwards; they had given him bland food after the weeks of starving, but it had still been too much for his stomach. He remembers the foul smell of his own sick, his own dirt, and he remembers the shock of the cold water, buckets of it being upended over him. His clothes being stripped away, and the scant comfort he took from being dressed in clean and dry robes – threadbare though they were, and much too long for him in the arms besides.

And after, sitting defiantly in his room with a bright flame burning over his upturned hand: his own creation, his own abilities, come to life at his command. They beat him for it in the morning but he remembers the fierce joy of it, the strength of his own will.

The knowledge that there were things that people holding collars could not do, could not _find_ , inside people held in those collars. Self-awareness, of course; the spell allowed mages to keep what they had – but anyone holding him in a collar could not control him completely. All they could do was manipulate him to answer their questions, take his magical powers and use them without his consent.

But they could never compel him to do anything more than that.

He knows that he kept Raven’s existence a secret until at least the first time she’d been allowed to visit him, nearly a year and a half after he’d been taken to the tower. He remembers the whispers, people talking about the impossibility of the two of them being related. So much surprise.

So now he holds Raven’s hands, thinks about Erik and the others, waits patiently for the signal.

When Eliszabeth finally screams – and it is a happy sound, something so completely out of place on the battlefield – he screams back at her readily, and he begins to laugh, even if it hurts to do so.

Even when the enemy mage’s reaction to that is to _take_ from Charles again, to start throwing spears of fire all over the field. Charles neither resists nor fights back; he simply pushes Raven to crouch in the dirt and he stands over her, laughing even as the flying ashes threaten to choke him.

Eliszabeth’s voice, ringing out over the battlefield, ringing in his mind: _Erik says we’re all clear! The citadel’s unshielded! They’re getting the prisoners out – everyone is safe!_

And he shouts to make himself heard over the roaring flames, over his enemy’s sudden bellowing rage: “Tell him and his group to get down here as fast as they can!”

_“Raven!”_

Charles whirls, and there is a young man charging toward him and his sister. Two swords bared and ready to attack.

Charles steps out of the way and Azzel is falling to his knees beside Raven, is pulling her into a desperate embrace. The blades fall into the dust with a loud clang. His pale face, his scar, his wounds. Joy and hope and fear warring in his eyes.

“Azzel?” Raven’s shocked whisper. Tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. Her hands shaking on his shoulders. “Impossible – how are you here?”

“I’ve been looking for you....”

Charles turns away from their frantic conversation. Keeps crossing the field even as he has to stifle a pained groan: the enemy mage pulling at his power yet again – and when he looks up, he’s looking at the steps of the citadel, at Summers and Jean back-to-back, their swords out and streaked with blood and ash.

The citadel is beginning to collapse in on itself, and he can hear and feel the great rumbling sounds of its demise, the powerful strikes booming from within, and he wonders vaguely about Shaw and Emma before he’s running forward, past the enemy mage, past the corpses of friend and foe alike.

Flames bursting up around him, his own powers resisting the mage, so the fire begins to attack the citadel itself. Eliszabeth screaming in his mind and over the battlefield: _“Protect yourselves!”_

Jean’s hand is hard on his arm as she catches him at the steps, as she attempts to pull him behind her to safety – and he lays his other hand on her shoulder, shakes his head. The look on her face as he turns and he pushes on the great doors; the sudden prickle of _knowing_ on the back of his neck, the voice that bursts out of him, bigger and deeper than he’s ever heard himself before.

“EVERYBODY GET DOWN!”

Flames roaring, and he pulls at Jean, who pulls at Summers, and the three of them fall in a heap at the open doors.

Inside the doors: Erik rising from his crouch, Emma helping Shaw to his feet. The remaining members of their small group running forward. Summers barking orders: “Get Azzel and the girl he’s with here – she’s Charles’s sister, make sure they’re safe!”

Jean, seconding him, shouting at the top of her voice: “Charles’s sister is collared! Take Armand with you, have him break her chains!”

“Here you are at last,” Charles says. Erik looks like he’s been through a war himself. Red eyes, streaks of blood – not his own – all over his arms. “What took you so long?”

“I was laying old ghosts to rest,” Erik says, and his voice is rough, like someone’s been making him scream – or cry. Like Raven, there are fresh tear-tracks on his face, and Charles reaches out to one, touches it gently with his thumb, brushes it away. “And I could not have done it without Emma.” Erik looks over his shoulder, at the little girl, who is patting Shaw’s arms down for wounds. “Talented, that one. She’ll need a teacher.”

“Yes, she will,” he murmurs. “But I am not interested in her right now, not truly. I want to know about you – how do you feel?”

“Like I could fight that mage with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Let’s not try that just yet,” Charles says, and he smiles at Erik. “At least, you are very mistaken if you think I’m going to let you fight him alone.”

“I never said that,” Erik says, and he reaches for the sword still strapped to his back.

Somehow, Charles already knows what he’s going to see when the white wrappings fall away, coiling onto the stone floor.

A flash of flame and light outside the doors, the soldiers ducking and protecting each other once again. The enemy mage, roaring for his army. The sounds of people dying, Jean and Summers directing their people, Eliszabeth relaying orders.

Charles only has eyes for the sword in Erik’s hands, and he reaches for it, and draws. The elegantly curved blade, the elaborate and beautiful rippling pattern hammered into the steel. A sword that he already knows intimately: the sword he had helped Erik forge. Light sparking off the edge of the blade, throwing fiery reflections into his eyes.

It is sized almost perfectly for him, sturdy and easily gripped in his own smaller hand. The delicate red threads embedded into the metal, the outline of a bright flame.

Erik takes the sword from him, sheathes it with a clear, ringing note, and he takes sword and scabbard in both hands and he starts to get down on his knees – but Charles stops him, hands on his shoulders. “No, Erik, not this time.”

“It is traditional,” Erik says. “At least, I did this when I presented my wife with the weapons I’d made for her.”

“I am not her,” Charles says, as gently as he can, “and perhaps if you are dealing with me, it will be good to have a different type of tradition.

“Besides, I still remember what you said, on the day that we met. You said you were my protector, you said you were mine to command. You presented yourself as someone inferior to me – you, inferior? Never. Come to me as an equal, Erik. Let us be partners.”

Erik smiles, then, and he straightens and holds out the sword. Hands near the hilt and near the tip of the scabbard. “I like the sound of that. The two of us, together.

“Take this, then.”

“Gladly,” Charles says, and he takes the sword between Erik’s hands and turns it upright, draws again. The sword is just a little heavier than his knife, beautifully crafted, and it glitters in the faint light of the flames in the citadel.

“Shaw,” Erik says. He is still looking at Charles.

“Yes?”

“Get out, all of you, and get everyone out of here, too – this citadel’s not going to last, not with the way we’ve been destroying it, not with the fires. Start regrouping – take Raven and Azzel with you; collect Eliszabeth and her escort; you know what to do. Charles and I will finish this.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you, Charles?” Shaw asks.

“Do what Erik says – and then clear the way for me, if you please,” Charles says.

“With pleasure. Come, Emma, you will have to guide me out to the doors at least.”

“All right,” comes the girl’s lilting reply.

Charles smiles, and then Erik reaches up, grips his hand on the sword for a long moment, warmth like his own flames. And when Erik lets go, when he draws his own weapon, Charles lets out a wild cry, and he runs forward, half-falling down the steps of the citadel, back out into the courtyard, leaving all the others in his wake.

Except for Erik, who runs at his side, who is shouting his own war cry as they charge.

Raven on the steps, finally free, and trailing chain links behind her; she’s picked up a bow from somewhere, and she’s standing ready beside Azzel, his buckler on her hand and a heap of arrows at her feet. Summers next to Jean, the two of them covering Emma. Shaw on the steps, ready to move forward. Armand leading Eliszabeth and her escort, all of them moving away in an orderly retreat.

For a moment, Charles imagines Erik is shouting a woman’s name, his wife’s name, and he smiles.

And Erik is skidding to a halt, turning sharply, and he dodges as the enemy mage hurls bolts and spears of fire at him. A shield, lying on the ground – he picks it up in one well-armored hand and he crouches behind it; another blast of flames and this time he rolls out of the way, circles the mage.

Erik strikes, and there is a long red gash over the enemy’s knee, blood flowing bright red onto the ground, and the flames from the staff burn hotter and hotter, yellow to white in an instant.

Charles fights back the urge to scream – what the mage is doing with his powers is _wrong_ , and _insane_ , and it hurts!

Instead, he drops into a crouch and runs, low to the ground.

Behind him, the mage is dragging something – a long length of chain, battered and heavy – the chain that had been attached to Raven. There’s so much of it! And Charles follows it with his eyes. The other end of the chain is wrapped around one of the enemy’s arms – the one that’s throwing the flames around, the one that’s not holding the staff.

Perfect.

Charles throws his voice across the battlefield, shouting as loudly as he can, over the screams of the two men already fighting, over the screams of the dying and the injured. “Shaw! Get ready to attack! _Follow my voice!_ ”

“Ready!” Shaw shouts back.

And now Charles has to work quickly; he’s announced himself, and no matter how skilled Erik is – and he is skilled, everyone knows that – Erik won’t be able to distract the mage for long. Charles sets his sword between his teeth, draws his knife. Crouch-runs back to the end of the chain, to the last complete link – and he rams the knife down into the ground against that piece of iron. Screech of the blade against the chain – he looks around and finds a heavy stone, and with a grunt he _slams_ it home, hammers the blade down, pinning the link to the ground.

All preparations done. He shouts, now, “HURRY, ERIK!” Pause, he draws breath: “SHAW, ON MY SIGNAL!”

He looks up, and the mage is already pulling on the chain, his wordless roaring drowning out the others’ answers.

And Charles looks down, watches as the chain goes taut, as the links begin to pull and strain against each other.

 _Here goes nothing,_ he thinks, and he blocks out the world, blocks out Raven and Erik, and he charges forward. His sword held high. A scream on the wind, still his, he now knows it’s his. Strained, raw, angry.

Erik slashes at the mage again, and this one cuts a huge gash into the arm holding the staff, and Charles takes advantage of the mage falling to his knees in pain to climb up onto his shoulders.

Charles fights for his balance atop the swaying mage and slowly, deliberately, he turns his sword point down. He holds the hilt in both hands, a white-knuckled grip – and he plunges the sword into the mage’s shoulder, and it shrieks against bone as he strikes. The blade sinking into muscle, the mage’s unearthly screaming. Fire licking along Charles’s skin, sharp and painful – and he doesn’t feel it.

He is shouting, instead. For Erik, to strike at the heart – for Shaw, to strike at the staff.

And over and over again, he screams at the mage: _“Release me! Give me back my flames!”_

Erik is there, suddenly, coming through the attacks still unscathed somehow, and he shares a long look with Charles.

The mage is screaming, fighting the two of them down.

As Erik draws his knife and thrusts it into the mage’s heart, Charles copies him, twisting his sword – and then they’re both being hurled away, Erik’s hand winding into Charles’s shirt and pulling him close. The two of them rolling to safety.

Shaw is getting pummelled with the staff, standing there and smiling and finally – he strikes. One clean punch to the mage’s arm, just above the wound from Erik’s sword.

The mage’s bones shattering, the staff breaking into a cloud of splinters.

And Charles gasps, and it’s like taking a clean breath of air, it’s like finally being able to see and hear and _sense_ again. He rolls to his feet, and he smiles and he looks at Erik and he says: “ _Go_ , Erik. And take Shaw with you.”

“Burn him, Charles,” Erik says, and he’s running back, toward his soldiers, taking Shaw’s free hand and urging him away.

“For you, Erik, I will,” Charles shouts. He’s on his feet, and he closes his eyes, and he looks into his heart. The fire that is now his own once again, roaring with joy to find him again. He thinks of his body bursting into flames, powerful and beloved warmth flowing down his skin. Wings of flame – he raises his hands – and he opens his eyes, he screams to the sky.

Flames, heat and strength, life and love and his friends, Raven and _Erik_ , and Charles _flies_.

[The story continues in [War Between Four Walls: Crucible, Part Two of Two](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/189747.html)]  



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